Noir: Contracts
by Section-Eight
Summary: In the tradition of Hitman: Contracts comes a new series from Ryoe Tsukimurabazadadadadadadalet’sago. Our heroes relive their most thrilling hits as they try to escape from their most dangerous situation yet! Not. As complete as it gets.
1. Ne Cede Concussu

**Noir: Contracts**

In the tradition of Hitman: Contracts comes a stunning new OAV series from Ryoe Tsukimurabazadadadadadadalet'sago. Our intrepid heroes relive some of their most thrilling hits as they try to escape from their most dangerous situation yet!

Not.

Warning: may cause (sympathetic) cranial trauma.

**Chapter 1: Ne Cede Concussu**

Sweat trickled down her forehead.

The end was near.

There, before her, was her nemesis. Cold. Implacable. Merciless. Fiendishly clever. Yet ever so beautiful. The shapes, the colours, that siren song...

The clock was ticking. No time, no way out. This was it. End of the line.

Wait!

THERE!

Move! Aim! Now!

Her finger stabbed downwards.

_Click._

_Dink. Dink. Whoosh._

"Level Up!" a voice croaked.

"YES!"

Mireille Bouquet, professional assassin and Bejewelled™ addict, had cheated death once more.

She cackled with delight, and took a triumphant victory swivel. My god, she thought, Level 87! And look at that score! HA! This'll show that punk 'L1n0fT3hW1r3d' who's the REAL Queen of the 'Net!'"

She screamed. "The game!" Breath coming in gasps, one bloodshot eye twitching slightly, she clicked madly, staving off sudden death.

Never had she felt such a rush. She was in the zone! She was thinking three, four, ten moves ahead, hand moving like lightning, eyes focused like lasers, mouse clicking like a machine gun. Assassinations could go stuff themselves; _this_ was her new anti-drug. This was better than any hit. This was better than chocolate. Hells, it was better than se --

Okay, said a voice in her head, let's not get carried away, now.

"Who said that?!" She whirled about, nerves jangling with fear, paranoia, adrenaline, and raw caffeine. Someone was here! Trying to stop her! Ruin her perfect game! But who?

Soldats!

Of course! Damn them!

But where? Where?!

Behind the couch?

The plant?

THE ROOF!

"_DIE SOLDAT DIE_!" she hollered, as she slung hot lead towards the opposite roof.

Glass shattered. A pigeon squawked, and plummeted to earth. It hit something. Tires squealed. Metal crunched. Curses flew.

Mireille blinked, and then ran to the window.

The pigeon had stunned a passing bicycle courier, who had careened into traffic, causing a Mini Cooper to swerve into the side of a passing cargo truck transporting chickens. Feathers and furious poultry were everywhere. A crowd of bystanders variously tried to help up and mug the courier. A fistfight threatened to break out amongst the drivers. And in the midst of it all, in a circle of blood and scattered feathers, with three little children waiting at home, was the poor, defenceless pigeon, cut down in its prime.

A passing nun, standing over the fallen, looked up at Mireille, and shook her head, sadly.

She slowly backed up, and then slumped down in the chair, numb. She looked at the gun in her hand, as if seeing it for the first time. It was shaking. Carefully, she placed it on the pool table. Someone was hyperventilating. Eventually, she realized it was her.

She looked at the computer screen. Those shapes, those little gems, all laughing, laughing at her, why, why were they laughing?

Then the room warped like a bad trip.

She caught the edge of the table before she hit the floor. "Woah." She clambered up, and reached out with one shaking hand for her elixir vitae. The pitcher of V-8 spiked with vodka and Jolt Cola paused halfway to her lips as some part of the fireworks show that was her brain remembered that that might not be such a great idea right now, what with the hallucinations, the paranoia, and her heart threatening to explode in her chest. Also, the plant had been telling her to cut back lately...

The plant?

"Maybe it's time to take a break," she mumbled. She clicked 'Save,' then slid unsteadily back on the chair's casters. Trying to get both eyes to blink in sequence, she checked the clock on the wall. Thank God. Only 11:00.

No. Wait. That's AM, isn't it.

Was it still Tuesday?

She tried to remember when she'd started this mess, but her head was an electric fog of gemstones, high scores, and, for some reason, penguins. And she hated penguins. She really did. Stuck up little bastards, think they're so hot. Oh, look at me, I can hit 45 knots in the water, and look good doing it! Twerps.

Where was she?

Oh yeah.

It's all Kirika's fault, really, she thought. She knows I have a problem with the Internet, yet she goes and jets off to Japan and leaves me all by my lonesome, all alone, with the game only a mouse click away, alone. So close to the joy, the glory, the heaven, the Top Ten All-Time High Score Hall of Fame...

A less muddled part of her brain reminded her about how she'd arranged the flight herself, and told her partner to go. "All things must come to an end," she'd said. "Take as long as you need. Try and find some closure. I'll be here."

Another, more belligerent portion, told it to shut up.

A third wondered how they get the caramel in the Caramilk bar, and then got back to the issue of Prada versus Calvin Klein.

"Bed," she mumbled, as she tried to swat the legion of jackhammers pounding her skull. "Bed, definitely, definitely bed." She tried her legs, and nearly toppled over. Great, she thought, slumped back in the chair, now what?

Inspiration! Wheels! Chair has them! Move chair -- bed = sleep, yes! Her sense of logic lodged a feeble protest, citing the case of "Why not just sleep in the chair, then?" before it was sucker punched by her libido. Taking another swig of her tonic for the road, she pushed off with both feet and slid across the hardwood floor. Gosh, this was FUN! Left, right, off the wall! Oooh, you can go _sideways_ in this thing! A spin! Whee! Over there, that way, ha ha h --

A .45 calibre hollow point round, one of several carelessly scattered about the room, caught in one of the casters, jammed it, and flipped the chair right over.

The back of her head connected with the floor with a solid _thud_.

Okay, she thought, as stars wheeled overhead and every part of her brain shouted at once, that hurt. Best get up, I suppo --

The pitcher, in accordance with gravity, completed its parabola and cracked against her forehead, splattering crimson everywhere.

"Damn...penguins..." she mumbled, as the world faded to black.

_Find yourself..._

..._starting back..._


	2. Fatum Iustum Bibliophile

**Chapter 2: Fatum Iustum Bibliophile**

She spotted someone on the opposite side of the busy London thoroughfare. Was it...? She checked through the binoculars.

Yes.

Long brown hair. Thick glasses. Overcoat. Suitcase.

The woman, thoroughly engrossed in a thick hardcover novel, wandered out into traffic. Cars swerved. Drivers hurled imprecations, and, in one case, a beer bottle, at her. She didn't notice.

Yup, thought Mireille. That's her, all right.

"_Yomiko Readman." The man slid the file across to her. "Substitute teacher and field agent of the British Library's Division of Special Operations. Code-named 'The Paper,' due to her abilities. Your target."_

"_A library needs field agents?" she asked._

"_They're rather strict when it comes to overdue books."  
_

"_Ah."_

"_She has the telekinetic ability to manipulate paper, paper derivatives, wood pulp (bleached and unbleached), and certain forms of peat moss. Exercise caution." He turned to leave. "Find her, and finish the job. You have seven days."_

And I only needed two, she thought.

The woman crossed over to her side of the street, sighing romantically. A flowerpot plummeted from five stories, missed her head by inches, and shattered messily. She didn't notice.

This could be easier than I anticipated, noted Mireille.

She stepped back into the alley's shadows. The woman, in a state of bliss that any other person would need several pounds of narcotics to achieve, floated by, suitcase skipping on the cracks in the walk, giggling to herself. As soon as she passed, Mireille raised her weapon and fired.

"Ah?!" said the woman. A crossbow bolt had shot Chaucer's finest right through the spine.

Mireille yanked on the string.

The woman whimpered as the book flew out of her hands and slid along the walk. "Eh?! Mister Canterbury! Don't leave me! Come back!" She chased after it, on the verge of tears.

Mireille snatched up the book, removed the bolt and line, and then stepped swiftly through a nearby doorway, intentionally leaving it ajar. She swept across the empty, darkened kitchen of the restaurant (closed for the holidays), placed the book in an obvious spot, then concealed herself in the room's darkest corner.

"Book!" The woman burst through the door, sending a rack of ladles clattering to the floor. "Book?" She looked about, breathing heavily.

She stopped. Her face melted.

"Book..." she sighed, as if reunited with a long lost lover (which, technically, she was). "Dear, dear book," she breathed, as she cradled it in her arms.

Then she noticed the gaping hole in it.

Her scream nearly jolted Mireille from her hiding place. "_Ohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigod!_" squealed the woman. "It's okay, it's okay Yomiko," she hyperventilated, "just a scratch, it can be fixed, just a nick, nothing more, just a book, no, no, not just a book, it's Chaucer, it's the 1648 edition of _Canterbury Tales_ damn it, and it's got a _great big bloody hole in it and **now someone's gonna pay for this sacrilege!**_"

She stood there, one outraged fist raised against the world, trembling with fury. Mireille tried to remember why'd she agreed to do this.

"No, stay calm, stay calm," panted the woman. "Stay calm, Yomiko. 'Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger,' and all that. Focus on priorities. Focus." She took a deep breath, exhaled, and then nuzzled the book to her face. "Don't worry, my precious, Mommy's here. She'll make things all better, just you wait." She sobbed. "Don't die! Please don't die!" She turned and shuffled towards the door.

Mireille rolled her eyes, aimed, and fired.

_Tink_.

She blinked.

The bullet, perfectly aimed, spun to a smoking halt in the middle of a 3' by 4' index card with the strength of steel, held by a woman who had went from distraught, delusional bibliophile to ice cold, focused book ninja in 0.1 nanoseconds.

Uh oh, she thought. No, don't hesitate; shoot!

Six more shots. All met the same end, the paper (and The Paper) moving at speeds fantastic. Don't panic, thought the assassin, reloading. Just a coincidence, that's all.

There was the sound of a hundred blackjack dealers shuffling. Three-hundred-fifty-seven index cards rushed in a wave from the woman's billowing coat, hovered in mid-air, and folded themselves into origami darts, knives, throwing stars, and, in a few cases, really pointy paper cranes, the air rustling with the snick and snap of dangerous folds. In one hand, the woman held the book. In the other, a great two-handed samurai sword, its manila-tag blade rippling with hatred. She rose from the ground, slowly, an avenging Fury from the depths of hell.

Aw crud, thought Mireille.

"_You._" The voice was malice. "You did this. You did this. To. My. _Precious_." She stepped forward, the projectiles circling like sharks, their rustling the chitter of a million rats.

"St-stay back!" said Mireille, in a voice unbefitting of her profession. She raised the gun in both hands. It was shaking.

A rush. A clang. A clatter.

She carefully dropped the remaining half of her gun as the great sword swung back around, coming to rest in the region of her neck.

"You," hissed the woman, glasses flashing. "You. Touched. My. _BOOK!_" The tip of the sword grew, forcing Mireille onto her tip-toes. The swarm of origami death settled into attack formation. "That really, really _aggravates_ me. My therapist said I should lighten up. Get out more often. Maybe find a new hobby. You know what?" The furious Valkyrie leaned closer. "Now she can't walk by a Barnes and Noble without _screaming_." She giggled, girlishly. Mireille would have fainted right there, had this not involved the loss of her head. "And now," said the woman, her voice trembling with passion, "now you're going to get a crash course in Literary Appreciation, _bitch!_"

"Look!" shouted Mireille, pointing. "The Encyclopaedia Britannica!"

"Ah?! Where?!" The woman whirled about, eyes sparkling.

The cast-iron pan connected with the back of her head with a resonant _dong_.

"Ooooh, Nancy-san," slurred the woman, "we shouldn't..." She toppled forward. The swarm of death morphed into a cloud of little tweety-birds, circled her head, and then plopped to the ground, lifeless.

Mireille put down the now-dented pan, and remembered to breathe.

A man stepped forth from the shadows, clapping slowly.

"Well done, well done," he said. "A bit crude in execution, but effective. Pretty good, for your first time."

"Thanks, Uncle Claude," she replied, smiling weakly.

"If this were a normal contract," he continued, examining the body, "you could now dispose of her at your leisure. As this isn't..." He reached inside the woman's coat, and pulled out a thick book.

"All this," said Mireille, "over an overdue book?"

"The British," he replied, "take overdue fees _very_ seriously." He pocketed it, and then put a friendly hand on her trembling shoulder. "It's all right. You did well. In fact, I think you might just be ready to turn pro."

"Really?" she said, hopefully.

"Just one thing, though." He picked up the pieces of the gun. It was a clean cut. "Walther PPK? Even Bond knew when to drop it, Mireille. You need better. Much better."

"I have had my eye on one of those P99s," she noted.

"Good thinking. Shall we?" He gestured towards the door.

"Uncle Claude?"  
  
"Mm?"

"I think she got a good look at me. Is it all right? To leave her alive, I mean?"

"Daisy, daisy, toothbrush me your give toomushumuhnumshumuhmbll," said the recently-concussed one.

"Ordinarily, no. But I think this is a special case."

"Oh."

"Now come on." He stepped into the alley. "There's a sale at Macy's, and I refuse to miss it."

"Uncle Claude?"

"Yes?" he said, in mock exasperation.

"Why are you wearing a dress?"

_The dreaming way is eased_

_down to the crushing centre_

_and spared the dance of forever_


	3. Two for the Price of One

**Chapter 3: Two for the Price of One**

A pair of pink shoes stepped onto the walk, followed by their closest companion. A soft voice gave thanks, and received a torrent of Gallic invective in exchange. The cab driver tore off at top speed, leaving the young woman choking on its exhaust.

Kirika Yuumura, Japanese exchange student (technically), master assassin (regrettably), and connoisseur of all things cute and cuddly (professionally), was home at last.

She trudged up the stairs to Mireille's apartment, waved to a pointless cameo known as Madame Trousseau, yawned, and fumbled for the keys. Pocket? No. Bag? Not. Novelty Kitty-Chan knapsack? Nope.

Through the haze of jet-lag, she recalled she'd left them back at the hotel in Japan. Imbedded in an overly-curious _yakuza_, if she remembered right. Nuts, she thought. That's the third set in three months. Oh well.

Yawning hugely, she considered her options. Window? Too public. Lockpick? She padded her pockets, recalled a second unfortunate _yakuza_ in Hokkaido, and gave up. Force? No, new deadbolt, and she'd just had her nails done.

As her subconscious calculated seventy-eight different ways a professional assassin could bypass the lock (three of which did not involve bloodshed), the slightly more practical part of her personality turned her around, borrowed the keys from the neighbours, and unlocked the door.

"Mireille?" she called, softly. "I'm back." She yawned and stretched, dropping her bag and oversized souvenir UFO-catcher Ninja Kerokerokerokeropi doll ("Ninja Action! Lucky Seven Fight-O!"). "I got you some Women's Pocky, like you asked, and --"

Nostrils flared. Eyes widened. Muscles tensed.

Broken glass.

Scattered bullets.

Blood everywhere.

A body.

"Mireille!" she cried, as she rushed to the aid of her fallen friend. "Mireille, what -- wah!" Her pink, noticeably grip-less shoes had slipped on the puddle of V-8 tonic.

Instinct took over. Leg muscles, thin, yet strong as steel wire, turned the fall into a forward flip. Kirika made a perfect one-point landing on the pool table.

More specifically, she landed on the 8-ball.

Slightly surprised, she flailed for balance, kicking pool balls all over the table, and unintentionally performing a tricky three-bumper shot into the corner pocket.

A heel caught an edge, sending her off-balance. Years of Soldat-sponsored indoctrination lead to a hand plant, followed by a cartwheel. She smashed into the cue-rack. Batting aside the oncoming cues with one arm, the other snatched the table edge, while her left heel balanced precariously on a bottle of Pocari Sweat that had rolled out of her bag, and her right leg caught the falling plant, knocked from its pedestal by an errant pool cue.

At this point, conscious thought finally caught up events, and demanded to know what the hell was going on.

"Wagh!" Distracted, her finely-tuned instincts, already twanging from shock, fear, adrenaline, and a serious case of jet-lag, dropped the ball (meaning her) completely. The edge of the table cracked her on the back of the neck.

The room swirled. Stars filled her vision. The plant was falling, falling...

No!

Summoning every last ounce of training, she spun, kicked off the wall, slid, and snagged the pot one-handed millimetres before impact, stopping just short of the radiator.

She smiled the big, stupid grin of the mildly concussed.

Wobbling slightly, she placed Mr. Begonia-san-sensei-kohai-sama-chan (her language centre was a bit scrambled) back in his place of honour. Ah, what wonderful memories she had of that plant. Watering it. Turning it. Keeping it aligned with the Earth's magnetic field. Checking its leaves for rot...

What was she doing?

Oh. Right.

"Mireille!" She rolled over the table, landed unsteadily, tottered forward, and slipped in the V-8 again.

The room flipped.

Her legs said, "Flip!"

Her arms said, "Catch!"

Unfortunately, their immediate superior, Miss Yuumura, had caught an upside-down glimpse of Ninja Kerokerokerokeropi-chan ("Soopah Akchun! A Winner Is You!"), and _she_ said, "Awww, _kawa --_"

_Crack!_

And as the fireworks exploded in her eyes, and the cold numbness of neural shock seized her extremities, the last conscious thought that Kirika Yuumura (World's Most Unlikely Accident Victim) had before the swirling vortex of oblivion claimed her, was this:

"I need better shoes."

_Your dark mind cutting through_

_the deeping sky_

_another time_

_another time_


	4. Acme Education

**Chapter 4: Acme Education**

"It's a job."

Kirika set down her copy of Chicken Soup for the Amnesic Soul and moved over to her partner, by the computer, as usual.

"Chiyo Mihama," she read aloud. "She's so young..."

"Officially ten years old," replied Mireille, "although with the analytical abilities of someone thrice her age. The CIA suspects genetic engineering; Mossad claims cybernetic enhancement. Whatever the case, she's easily the top student at the Oishiinezumi Institute of Learning."

"'Tasty Rat'?" asked Kirika, after translating it in her head.

"Don't ask me; it's your culture."

"But, she's just a girl. Why would anyone want to hurt her?"

"Have you ever heard of this school, Kirika?" She shook her head. "Didn't think so. Although it was in the same neighbourhood as the one you were registered in, oddly enough." She leafed through a pile of printouts and passed her a pamphlet. "Their curriculum."

She read it. "English, Math, Physical Education, Military History, Strategic Weapons and Assault...oh."

"The most advanced and prestigious training centre for para-legal operatives in the Pacific Rim," said her partner. "And a direct rival to L'École du Coups Puissant, which I attended," she added, parenthetically. "Up until that unfortunate incident with the yak, anyway." She cleared her throat. "The future leaders of the underworld learn their trade there, as do a great number of non criminally inclined students whose parents liked the facilities. Our client is a student there, actually."

"But...she's just a child," said Kirika. "I mean..."

"I know. That's why I did some checking." She plucked a folder from the pile by the monitor. "Interpol has issued a global warrant for her arrest on charges of Egregious and Excessive Adorability (that's their code-word for grand-theft nuclear submarine, I found out). The Japanese Self-Defence Force once fingered her for possible involvement in the 2007 Godzilla Encounter, but dropped the case, citing lack of living witnesses. In her spare time, she works at the local soup kitchen, advises the Hong Kong Triads on money laundering and RRSP contributions, and walks a very large dog, who, incidentally, urinates on public fire hydrants." She tossed the folder aside, and settled back. "One thing you learn very quickly in this business, Kirika, is that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander."

"I understand that," said the young one, "but, is this really our kind of job? I mean, it says on the website..." She pointed to a window running Mozilla on the monitor. The words "No kids, please!" were clearly written next to a gaudy animated GIF flashing "Ask About Our Two For One Special!"

"Ordinarily, I would agree. But in this case," said Mireille, scrolling down in the email to the "Payment" section, "I think we can make an exception."

Kirika read the number. It took some time. "That...that...that's a very..._big_...number..."

"Yup. And _you_ just bought all of Ranma 1/2 on DVD."

"But Mousse san is so adorable..." she whispered, sheepishly. "Can we trust the client?" she asked.

"A. Kasuga is one of the most wealthy and influential figures in the Osakan crime syndicate. And if you can't trust the _yakuza_," said Mireille, with an impish grin, "who can you trust?"

A few seconds passed.

"Well...there's the --"

"Rhetorical question, Kirika."

"Oh."

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

It was a sunny, spring day in Japan. The birds were singing, the rats were copulating, and 678 criminal-masterminds-to-be were on lunch-break, chatting and playing in the exercise yard.

"School..." whispered Kirika.

"Kirika?" buzzed a voice in her ear. "Kiiiirika?"

She exhaled, her eyes glazing over noticeably.

A nearby bush disgorged an angry Corsican in camouflage gear (by Calvin Klein). "Kirika!" she hissed, snapping her fingers in front of her partner's face. "Snap out of it!"

"Eh? Wha?"

"Better."

"Mireille? Why were you using the headset if you were so close?" she asked, meaning the wireless earpiece.

"Field test. Never mind." She motioned her partner to crouch lower, as two kindergarten students playing "Robbers and Robbers" scampered by their position. "Now, Mihama and her cohorts are over on the far side of the yard." She handed a small bottle to her partner. "This contact poison will kill without warning in thirty minutes. Our client wants her to perish publicly and inexplicably. You know the route?"

Her partner nodded.

"And I see you've already changed into your disguise," noted Mireille. "Any problems with it?"

She examined the classic school uniform. Running, shooting, fear, blood, murder, death, _kill_ --

"No, I'm good."

"Great. I'll watch your back through the windows. If I see anything, I'll let you know over the wireless." Kirika nodded. "Remember the escape plan. Good luck." The blonde vanished into a shrubbery.

She popped a stick of gum in her mouth, then crossed the yard at a measured pace, pausing briefly to discourage a crowd of angst-ridden teenagers whom thought they'd found a kindred spirit. As she reached for the door, a young nerd with glasses propositioned her for a Yearbook Club photo. Dispatching him with a look, she left him babbling incoherently, and stepped inside.

Immediately, she hit the ground, rolled, and flattened herself against the opposite wall. Cameras, she thought. Lots of them, she noted. She remembered reading about the CEO of Nikon being one of the school's corporate sponsors.

"The cameras on the first floor are remote-monitored," her partner buzzed in her ear. "Use the countermeasures."

She tossed the October issue of Hawt Anime Babes Monthly down the corridor, making sure it landed centrefold-up. Seven cameras snapped towards it, and then zoomed in considerably. Kirika, thankfully ignorant of the situation's Freudian aspects, rolled and ran up the stairs, silent as the winds of death. At the top of the stairs, she hesitated, placed the gum in her mouth on a 3x4" glossy of Aya Hisakawa in a pop-star outfit, then stuck the picture in front of the camera lens directly above her. She swept by the row of open windows, (ignoring the moans of "Ah! Hisakawa sama!" coming from the nearby Security room) and staying close to the lockers.

"Two teachers up ahead, around the corner," buzzed the voice in her ear. "Coming your way."

She rocketed skyward. Swiftly, she dislodged a ventilation grille, pulled herself up, replaced it, and waited. Two women, one visibly drunk, the other visibly embarrassed, came into view.

"Honestly, Yukari," said the latter, "couldn't you have waited? You've got three more classes today!"

"That, Professor," slurred the former, "would be a unacceptibliminal violation of my prinshlip -- plinshilp -- ethics."

"Drunken skank," muttered the latter.

"Stuck up bourgeoisie," the former replied.

"What?!"

A catfight broke out. After a cursory nod to the other ninja assassin hiding in the duct, Kirika slid out, ran along the wall, and flipped and rolled into a classroom.

"Should be the first desk in the centre row," buzzed her partner. "Next class starts in three minutes; hurry." Swiftly, she stepped up to the desk, and pulled on some velvet gloves. She peeked in the desk, spotted the book, and --

"Hello!"

Kirika started. An orange-haired, pig-tailed munchkin with eyes half the size of her head (a bit small for her age, in other words) smiled at her from the doorway. "My name is Chiyo!" she squeaked. "What's yours?"

And as she looked upon that face, that horrible, hideously cute face, with its sparkling eyes and bubbling optimism, and its waggling, wobbling, almost living pig-tails, she realized that there were things beyond her world of death and subterfuge. Terrible things. Things Yuumura kind Was Not Meant to Know. Things so alien, so _other_, that the human mind staggered at the mere hint of their existence, before it fell headlong into the swirling hells of insanity. And that these things were _here_, _on Earth_, in this very room.

_And they wore sailor_ _fuku_.

"You're cover's blown!" screamed a voice in her ear. "Evac! Evac NOW!"

Some part of her tore itself away from terror's titanic grip and cast a smoke bomb on the ground. Swiftly, while the fiend in human shape was blinded, she hurled a chair through a nearby window, ran, and leapt. Glass spiralled through the air.

She landed on someone, bounced off, and rolled for cover. "This is the police!" said a familiar voice over a megaphone. "You are all under arrest on charges of First Degree..." Someone fumbled audibly with a piece of paper. "Enn joh Koh sai," said the voice, in terrible Japanese. "Surrender!"

"Never!" shouted the girl she'd landed on. Sporadic gunfire (actually firecrackers, she knew) erupted from the trees.

The yard exploded. Students screamed, and shouted orders. Throwing knives, pistols, grenades, and (in the case of the girl she'd landed on) two assault rifles leapt from secret pockets and stashes. Shrapnel and bullets flew. The ground shook. Smoke and blood drifted on the air. Swiftly, she sprinted for the trees. As she rolled for cover, she caught a brief glimpse of that girl she landed on shooting wildly into the air, cackling, while another, taller one, with glasses, tried to restrain her.

Don't stop, don't stop, she thought. Don't look, don't think, just run! Branches whipped at her face. She leapt, cleared the fence, dodged the razor wire, slid down the embankment...

A car screeched to a halt before her. "Get in!" shouted the driver. She dove through the rear passenger window, using her hands to stop herself from smashing into the opposite doors. "Hang on!" Tires squealed. Acceleration bounced her back into the seat. Inertia flung her about. Finally, she managed to cling to the back of the driver's seat, just as the vehicle took a corner on two wheels.

Then, at last, there was peace, save for the tortured whine of the Honda Civic's motor and the wind whipping by at thrice the speed limit. Calm, she thought. Good. Now, to keep my heart from exploding...

As she slowed her pulse rate to something less than the speed of fright, she realized her partner was talking.

"...amn, damn damn!" she cursed under her breath. "Stupid, just stupid..."

"Mireille, I'm sorry, I --"

"No, not you, me." She thumped the wheel, a dangerous move at 135 km/h. After she got the car back under control, she slowed to something approaching legal speed. "It was my fault. I planned this out. I should've known she'd be a keener..." She stopped for a red light (for the first time in 12 blocks). "Did she see you?"

"I...I don't know, I was, was hiding under the desk..."

"Hiding?"

"You weren't there," shuddered Kirika. "You didn't see those eyes. Those horrible, terrible, doe-like eyes!" She sobbed.

Mireille looked at her strangely. "Um, there, there?" She gave her a few hesitant pats on the shoulder.

"Is that it then?" asked Kirika, when they started moving again. "Did we fail?"

"Not yet," replied her partner. "We've got one more chance. It's risky, but we've a contract to fulfill." She looked back at her passenger, and saw the strain in her face. "I...think I can handle it alone."

"No. I'll help."

"All right, if you insist. But this time, you'll be the backup; I don't think you're ready for another run just yet." She looked back, concerned. "You look like a wreck. Are you sure...?"

"I'm fine," she whispered. Just give me some time to file this away with all my other repressed traumas, she added, mentally.  
  
Mireille raised an eyebrow, remembered something, and just barely dodged a lamppost.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

"According to our client," said the voice over the earpiece, "the target walks this way every day after class. She has two escorts. The first is a dog, French lineage. Big, white fur, likes liver. I'll take it down."

"The other?" Kirika whispered into her lapel mike.

"Sakaki O'Ren Ishii. Alias The Silent Giant. Master assassin and leader of the Seven Sisters of Sekhmet. _And_ subscriber to Neko-Neko-Wai-Wai Magazine. That's where you come in."

"Is this necessary?" she whispered, leaning against the wall. "It seems so...cruel..."

Dead silence. "Kirika..."

"Mm?"

"Do you actually _remember_ what you did to those poor men in Singapore?"

"That was self-defence. This, this is just...wrong..."

"There's no right and wrong in this business, Kirika; just us and the dead." There was a rustle over the earpiece. "I see them. Get ready."

She could hear them. Or rather her. It. She could hear that squeaky-clean, pure-as-fallen-snow voice chattering away about flowers and kitty-cats and how to kill a man at twenty paces using a toy yak. She shuddered in recognition. The package squirmed in her hands.

"There're in range," said the voice. "Release the distraction."

She looked at the thing in her hands. "But..."

"_Now_, Kirka!"

She flung the kitten over the wall. It yowled noisy. Suddenly, she felt depressed.

"Ishii's taken the bait." She heard steps running around the corner after the airborne kitty, as that hideous voice chattered on. "I have a shot."

A _click_, followed by a nearly inaudible _thunk_.

"Eh?! Mr. Tadakichi? Aa!" A _thud_, as if a large animal had slumped on its side. "Uff! Mr. Tadakichi? Wake up! Get off me, please?"

"Going in," buzzed the voice in her ear.

A rustle of leaves. Two high-heels clicked on the pavement. A safety catch clicked. A young girl gasped, then whimpered.

Kirika closed her eyes tight, and waited for the inevitable.

It was late.

She opened one eye, and then the other. No click of a hammer? No screams? No dramatic tinkle of fallen shell cartridge? She sniffed the air. No gunpowder? And when she listened in, she swore she could hear _two_ sets of lungs breathing.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

"Mireille!" She was over the wall in one swing, weapon ready.

Her partner was seated on the curb. She appeared vexed. Swiftly, averting her gaze from the Thing on the walk, she ran to her side. "Mireille? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"(Unintelligible mumblings)," she replied.

"'(Unintelligible mumblings)'? I don't understand."

"I said, 'I can't do it,' okay?" said Mireille, in obvious irritation. She gestured at the heap of flesh nearby. "She's too damn cute," she added, ashamed.

Kirika turned to look. Too late, she realized her mistake. Terror's titanium claws ripped open her chest, seized her heart, and squeezed.

Before her, was...It.

It, with its grotesque body, that gestalt fusion of Fenrir and Eve. It, with its eight twisted limbs: four with claws, hooked and stained with the blood of the Earth, two with great, black hammers, to pummel it, and two with five tremulous tendrils apiece, to whip and burrow through it. It, with its twinned heads: one shock white, lupine, with razor teeth and a serpent tongue, blood red, oozing from its sole orifice; the other pale, with two wriggling horns of orange flame, and eyes. Those eyes, like those of the great creatures that dwell in the darkest valleys of the ocean, those eyes that were not eyes at all, but rippling, trembling portals to a world where Things craving the light and warmth of this world, this all too naïve, defenceless world, watched, waited...and hungered.

And just as the council of thought that the world knew as Kirika Yuumura was about to collapse into a gibbering panic, the low-ranking, oft-ignored Secretary (known to some as Rational Thought) thrust itself through the maddened crowd and slapped Chairperson Kirika in the face.

She blinked. And looked again.

Before her was a large, well-bred dog with a glossy white coat. A Great Pirenees, to be exact, although her Soldat indoctrination was curiously lax when it came to cynology. There was a tranquilizer dart sticking out of its neck. It was sprawled in an undignified fashion on a small, relentlessly cute girl that was, for lack of a better word, wibbling.

"Um, a-are you, going to...kill...me?" squeaked the child.

"Are we?" Kirika asked of her partner.

"I can't," sighed Mireille. "You do it, Kirika."

"What? Me? B-but don't we need some sort of complicated ritual recited by three Miskatonic professors to make her vulnerable first?" she babbled.

Mireille gave her a look. "Did you land on your head or something when you jumped out that window?"

"Um...no?"

"Then just shoot her already!"

Kirika aimed, whimpered, and nearly fainted. Suddenly, her partner felt embarrassed.

"Well, _one_ of us has to do it," said Mireille. "Tell you what; you shoot her in the chest, and I'll go for the head. 50/50, okay?"

"(Whimper)," she replied. Mireille felt a migraine coming on. The little girl raised a hesitant hand.

"Um, excuse me?" she said. "Is there some kind of problem, here?"

Mireille sighed. "Might as well tell you...we'll be lucky to get out of this with severance pay as is. We're assassins, hired to kill you. But you're so...disturbingly cute...that you've apparently driven my partner into a catatonic state, and, well, that kind of puts a damper on my killer instinct, too. But we made a deal: one target, one payment, half now, half on the completion of the job. And you always, _always_ finish the job. Life's cheap, but trust isn't. Break a deal, break a promise, and you'll never pay off the debt. I've never, _we've_ never, broken a contract yet. But I guess there's a first time for everything," she sighed. "If Human Resources Weekly gets wind of this..."

"How much money are we talking about, here?" asked the kid, speculatively.

Mireille named the figure. The kid looked thoughtful.

"Will you take a cheque?" She smiled, forming darling little rosy dimples on either cheek and transforming her eyes into upside-down U's.

Kirika fainted.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

She awoke in the back seat of a car. Someone was humming _La Marseillaise_. A blonde somebody.

"Mireille?" she said muzzily. "Wha happen?"

Still humming, her partner passed her a very long piece of paper from the driver's seat. She read it.

"That...that...that's a very..._very_...big number," she said.

"Of course, it doesn't happen very often," said Mireille, more or less to herself, "but there are precedents. Jimmy "Not the Super Fly" Snooker did it in '78. Rodrigo "Just Rodrigo" Montoya held off an entire armed division in the same way as recent as 2003."

"Who wrote this che -- _Mihama Chiyo?!_"

"Well, the file _did_ say she came from a rich family," said Mireille. "And there's the assassin's motto: _nil mortifice sine lucre_. Kind of obvious to invert it, really; don't know what came over me."

"She...who...how...what?"

"She offered us twice the worth of the contract, plus travel and surveillance expenses, in exchange for her life and the name of the client. A good deal all around."

She was, for quite likely the first time in her young life, completely flabbergasted. "B b but what about 'trust'? What about 'break a deal, break a promise'?"

"Oh, Kirika," replied her partner, with a soft chuckle, "you're forgetting the first rule of our profession."

"'Leave No Witnesses'?" guessed Kirika.

"Uh, no."

"'One Shot, One Kill'?"

"Err, no..."

"'Take Only Lives, Leave Only Corpses, Because Only You Can Prevent High-Speed Police Chases'?"

"What? No! It's, 'Don't Expect to Live if You're Stupid'!"

Kirika pondered the wisdom of this maxim. "Um, I don't think I've heard that one before."

Mireille shook her head in disgust. "As soon as we find out who it was that trained you," she said, "I'm going to give them a stern talking to about the importance of teaching the fundamentals!"

"So, this justifies our being bribed _how?_"

"Our client contacted us directly, and used her real name. Heck, she even used her personal email account. _And_ she didn't make the industry-standard 'No Stab-Backs' insurance deposit. She was practically crying out to be double-crossed!"

"Um, won't the client go and make life a living hell for us now?"

"Nope. Mihama said she was looking for an excuse to go after her, and said this was it. Mentioned something about trepanning..."

"And what about Cthul -- I mean, Miss Mihama?"

"Oh, I told her that if the cheque bounced or she ever came after us that some friends of mine would come by and set her on fire or something. And then she mentioned in passing that if I did we might get a squad of ninjas in the mail. So we called it even. Oh, except we have to send her a Christmas card with a fuzzy rabbit on it."

"So," said Kirika, as the tremendous moral implications of her situation began to sink in, "we broke into a high-school, staged a terrorist incident, tossed a kitten, knowingly committed our own employer to impromptu amateur brain surgery, threatened our new client with immolation...and we get paid _double?_"

Mireille nodded, still humming.

"Mireille?" asked the young one.

"Yeah?" replied the old(er) one.

"Does this qualify as Pure, Unadulterated, Absolute Evil, or have we passed beyond all mortal concepts of right and wrong?"

Mireille patted her on the head. "Ah, so cute you are when you're moralizing. Victory _saké_?" She proffered a large (half-empty) bottle.

"Please."

_stay the hard way_

_dark dreaming carries all_


	5. One Thousand Thousand Slimy Things

**Chapter 5: One Thousand Thousand Slimy Things **

"You're in for an education this time." Mireille stopped for a red light. "This is not your typical contract."

"Mireille?" asked her sleep-deprived partner in the seat next to hers.

"Yeah?"

"Weren't we in Japan just now?" she yawned.

Mireille looked at her curiously. "Kirika, this _is_ Japan. F-City. You know, in F-Province?"

"No, I mean, just now, when we went to that school, and..."

Concerned, she looked carefully at her jet-lagged partner. "Kirika, that was three months ago. Are you feeling all right?"

Kirika blinked at her with an expression of complete and utter befuddlement, then yawned hugely.

"You must have been dreaming," said Mireille.

Her partner nodded in agreement, slowly. "What's so special about this case?" she asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"You read the dossier, correct?" said Mireille, as the light turned green.

"'Excel Excel,'" she recited, "'alias E-Chan, alias Etchan, alias Excel Kobayashi, alias Excel No-Not-Like-Access™, alias Bob the Builder. Orange hair, green eyes. 1.3 meters tall. 62 kilograms (78 with shoulder-pads). Top agent for the secret ideological organization/temp agency known as ACROSS. Wanted for crimes against humanity; she is considered to be the first person ever to be charged with being in violation of the Geneva Protocol through the simple fact of her existence. Enjoys walks on the beach, dogs, recreational discharge of firearms, dogs, eggs, haggis, Pokémon, dogs, long debates about the nature of the universe, _kabuki_, mass murder, macramé, collecting lint, and dogs. Was once bitten by a moose in --'"

"Okay, okay, that's enough. Sheesh, how do you remember all that stuff?"

"Um, haven't we been over that before?"  
  
"Ah, right. 'If I knew that, then I could yadda yadda.' But there's one thing that wasn't in there. I know it wasn't, since I'm probably one of the only people who know about it."

"Know about what?"

"Our target? She's immortal."  
  
Her partner looked at her strangely. "Are _you_ feeling all right, Mireille?"

"It's true," she replied, turning a corner. "I don't know how or why, but she just can't die. If I hadn't seen it for myself I would never have believed it was possible. Heck, I still don't."

"Are you sure? I mean, you were mixing Mydol with vodka on the flight over..."

"Damn it, yes! I'm completely, utterly, sane, sober, and stable right now!" They drove on for a few blocks before turning into an isolated side-street, populated by a few bums, a pastor, and a hot dog vendor with no concept of 'location, location, location.' She parked the car in front of a non descript tobacco shop, and cut the engine. "She can, and has, died. But she doesn't stay dead. What's more, no one seems to notice."

"And not a little bit; two, three bottles, wasn't it?"

Mireille twitched, then sighed. "Look, just trust me on this, okay? You'll believe it when you see it." She squinted at something at the far end of the street. "And here's your chance, I think."

A young man had skidded around the corner, looking over his shoulder, scared out of his wits. He spotted the preacher, sprinted up to him, and threw himself at his knees, apparently begging for something. Although the car was soundproofed, Mireille, reading his lips, picked out the words "help," "sanctuary," "banshee," and (this is what confirmed her suspicions) "oh god oh god oh god please please please keep that horrible woman away from me." The pastor started to say something.

Simultaneously, the street's inhabitants pricked up their ears. Their faces fell, as one, as if hearing the sound of an oncoming train after having walked down a long dark tunnel for several minutes.

"Someone's coming," said Kirika. "Someone...singing?" Mireille shushed her, and bid her watch the street.

An orange haired woman with shoulder-pads that were continents unto themselves pranced around the corner. She was skipping, hopping, twirling, and, above all else, screaming her lungs out to the heavens above.

They heard the young man's scream even through the car's insulation. In a panic, he was trying to climb up one of the buildings whilst covering his ears with both hands. The hot-dog vendor, noticing the commotion, dived into his own stand, got stuck, and ended up upside-down, legs kicking at the air. The bums clutched each other and cried.

The pastor, trying to be brave, stepped forward and brandished a holy book in one trembling hand, fumbling for a vial of holy water with the other, as he shouted what Mireille recognized as the first few lines of a classic exorcism ritual. The woman spun, and accidentally kicked him in the crotch before unintentionally giving him a vicious elbow to the spine, followed by a spinning lariat that sent him into a nearby alleyway. Still singing, she spun and two-stepped her way down the street, clicking her heels, hanging off lampposts, and smashing people into walls. She cornered the troop of bums across the street from Mireille's car, and engaged them in casual conversation.

"Those poor men," breathed Kirika, upon seeing their expressions.

"Let's help them, shall we?" She drew her silenced pistol from the glove compartment.

"Mireille?! No! In public? We can't!"

"Relax," she said. "Mirrored windows, for one. And for two...well, you'll see." She reached for the window controls. "Watch, and learn." She hesitated. "Ah, you might want to cover your ears for this."

She did.

Mireille rolled down the window, and --

"-- and that would make no sense since then I wouldn't be a penguin, I'd be a pen_guine_, and that's not right, but that's not important right now, what's important is the economy and the fact that orange juice is $3.44 a litre and that's an injustice 'cause I really like the stuff and now I can't afford it and my mouth is as dry as the desert which actually isn't all that dry if you eat it with _haaaaaaaaaaaaail_ Ilpallazo because he makes the birds sing and the clouds rain and the sun shine although not all at the same time unless he's been into the cleaning supplies again and I just remembered I spilled bleach on my face this morning and it really really hurts although not as much as that time when I put out Menchi using my face (never try dog-flambé with napalm) and I missed and hit the curry udon but that's not important right now, because I have to tell you all about the wonderful new world that you'll live in when ACROSS takes over the universe and saves the whales (them's good eats!) and frees the sleighs through an equal-yet-non-deterministic redistribution scheme made possible through the genius of _haaaaaaaaaaaaail_ Ilpallazo who is wise and hot and hunky and sexy and makes me sweat but I shouldn't sweat since I haven't had anything to drink in seven days and if I lose any moisture I'll shrivel up like a prune, and I hate prunes, but that's not important right now, what's important is that you relax, relax! You're all so tense, sheesh! Just do what I do and think of the glorious future that awaits you as free and equal life-slaves in the upcoming just and fair military dictatorship of ACROSS, where no one will go hungry since everyone will have their own emergency field rations like this one here! Aaak! Where's Menchi!? You can't leave a dog alone in this part of town; some strange sewer octopus might eat it, and Menchi is mine mine mine, with a glass of wine, and hey, is that Pinot Grand Fenwick you've got there? Gimmie! Every day will be wine day in the Glorious People's Republic of ACROSS, and you too can join it for only three easy payments of $5900.86 plus shipping and handling, although I do the shipping and the handling and I don't get paid, but that's okay, because my love for Ilpallazo-sama is all I need. _Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaail_ --"

_Click._

"--Ilpalllaaasssssurglegurgle..." The screeching banshee flopped to the ground, minus a decent portion of her head. Silence rolled in, no longer displaced by the tsunami of sound coming out of her mouth. A single brass shell casing tinkled off the asphalt in an artistic fashion.

The young man leapt for joy. The bums, covered in blood, erupted into applause. The pastor, from a pile of refuse, praised whatever gods might be listening.

Mireille smiled sheepishly, waved, and then rolled up the window. She turned to her companion in the passenger seat. Huh, she thought, that woke her up all right. "Well?" she asked of her.

"That voice..." she whispered.

"That's why I soundproofed the car," said Mireille, nodding. "Fortunately, the auditory nerve tends to cut out after about half a second of exposure to it, so --"

She shook her head. "No, I mean, that voice. It sounded like yours."

Mireille did a double-take. "What?!"

"It did," she replied, perfectly serious. "I was listening."

"Are you sure that wasn't your ears bleeding or something?"

She shook her head. "It was like you, if you were someone completely different. There's some sort of connection between you two. Same voice, different face."

"I...I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, flustered. The pastor had joined the bums, the young man, and the newly-liberated hot dog vendor, and was leading them in a joyous hymn.

"Is that it then?" asked Kirika. "She's dead, isn't she?"

"Right, the demonstration," muttered Mireille. She checked the clock radio. "Okay, watch the corpse, and _don't blink_. It should happen right about...now!"

The universe went _bloop_.

The woman was suddenly on her feet, whole and even more hyperactive than before. The pastor had just remembered to scream when one of her wildly flailing limbs knocked him into a low-Earth orbit. The others howled in madness before fleeing for their lives. As for the woman, she hopped, danced, skipped, twirled, and doe-sea-doed her way right over an open manhole. Through the car's thankfully excellent insulation, Mireille could just hear a rapidly disappearing voice say, "Eeeeee I'm falling!" followed by a very distant splash.

"See?" she said, turning to the young one.

Kirika blinked. "Mireille?"

"Yes?"

"Did...the universe..."

"Just go 'bloop'?"

"Um..."

"Yep."

"Oh." She thought on this. "Um...Mireille?"

"Yeah?"

"What the hell is going on?"

Mireille leaned back in the driver's seat. "I really have absolutely no idea, Kirika," she said.

"And...the people...this happens all the time?" Kirika couldn't believe it. "Am I still dreaming?"

"Nope. You're as awake as I am, I'm afraid." Noting her partner's look of fear and confusion, she tried to comfort her. "Look, I know this isn't our usual fare, but a contract's a contract, right? Just don't think about it too much."

Suddenly, she realized something. "Wait...how did you know that would happen?"

"Let's just say," said Mireille, with a wry smile, "that that woman's little trick was enough to fund my Masters in Literary Appreciation, okay?"

"Oh." She thought some more. "But if that's true, aren't we done here?"

"Not quite. Apparently, I'm not the only one who notices little things like this." She leaned on the wheel. "Our client, the paramilitary group FREEMEN-1, specified in the contract that they wanted the target not killed or eliminated, but _erased_. Permanently. That's why we're here," she added, gesturing at the store they'd stopped by.

"'Rumschmit 'n Pat's Tobacco and Hot Wax Emporium'?" read Kirika, as they stepped out of the car.

"Nothing in this world is ever as it seems at first glance, Kirika," replied Mireille. "We're lucky our target cleared the streets, actually; the owners are publicity shy. You have the briefcase?" Kirika nodded, hefting a metal attaché case from the back seat. "Then, shall we?"

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

A cheery little bell jangled as they stepped through the old, oaken doorway. An overpowering scent of choice tobaccos and aromatherapy candles washed over them. Cigars, cigarettes, pipes, filters, hookahs, ash-trays, and 67 types of imported matches lined the walls, shelves, and countertops. Stacks, piles, and towers of candles (of all shapes, sizes, colours, scents, and wick-types, and composed of beeswax, earwax, paraffin wax, and, oddly enough, napalm) lay claim to almost every square centimetre of floor space. Candelabras, chandeliers, torches, and a really impressive set of hand-made Japanese paper lanterns ruled the airspace above. An ancient radio played some soft, relaxing, yet vaguely irritating bazouki music.

"Welcome, welcome!" said a dark skinned octogenarian behind the counter. "Welcome to Rumschmit 'n Pat's Tobacco and Hot Wax Emporium! And how can I help you young ladies this afternoon?" she asked, in a quavering voice.

"We're in the market for something special," said Mireille, stepping around a tower of wax and under a Mid-Victorian period chandelier.

"Well, you're in luck!" said the woman, whose name-tag read 'Rumschmit.' "We've a brand-new shipment of lilac-scented aromatherapy candles carved in the shape of pixies and fairies (straight from Switzerland), and a wide selection of Razentov Modern Women™ telescopic filters (available in seven colours!)."

"Thanks, but no thanks," she replied, almost toppling a display stand of Black Death Cigarellos.

"Something for the young one, then? We've over seventy types of toffee and chocolates over in the corner (behind the hookah, you see). Or some leg wax? This new Naptha Acid-X stuff goes right down to the roots, you know," said the woman, proffering a bottle.

Mireille, having finally reached the counter, leaned on it and looked the woman straight in the eye. "We're here to see your _other_ wares, Miss Vincent."

The woman looked right back at her. "I have no idea what you're talking about, young woman," she said, her face perfectly expressionless.

"My Uncle Claude sends his regards."

She cocked her head to one side. "Claude Feyder? Tall, shaggy blonde, fine figure in a dress?"

"Yes," replied Mireille, wincing at that last comment.

The woman nodded. "You must be his famous niece, then. Although I don't recognize her...?"

"Her name's Kirika. A partner of mine."

The woman nodded again, then shuffled over to the bead curtain covering a door to the rear of the shop. "May? _May!_ We have a customer!"

"You handle it!" screeched a voice from the back. "I'm busy back here with the, ah, candles!"

"No, no! A _real_ customer!"

"Woo!" A few hurried footsteps later, and a tiny woman in her late twenties wearing sandals, a flak jacket, a hair net, and gloves, and carrying what was clearly a large coffee-can of crystallized nitro-glycerine (according to the label, complete with felt-drawn happy face) exploded (figuratively, thankfully) through the bead curtain. "Bomby bomby bomby bomby," she sang, as she set down the can and did a little shuffle.

Mireille and Kirika stepped back, in unison.

"Knock it off, May," said Miss Vincent, all trace of old age banished from her voice. "Ready?" The small one pulled a chrome-plated key from her blouse, as the moderately-taller one did the same. In sync, they inserted both keys into either ear of a small ceramic cat statue located next to the till, and turned them.

Kirika jumped as thick titanium security shutters slammed down over the windows and doors. Shelves of recreational combustibles rotated on hidden axes to reveal sparkling racks of hand grenades, pistols, assault rifles, and machine guns from all eras and nations. Stacks of candles disappeared through trap doors, out of which rose display stands of body armour, throwing knives, and Stinger missile launchers (in five designer colours). One of the larger chandeliers retracted noisily up into the dark ceiling, and then came back down moments later bearing what appeared to be a small tactical nuclear missile.

Mireille, although having been briefed on the store before, was nonetheless impressed. "I'm impressed," she said.

"It's a real pain to keep all the chains oiled, but it does keep the customers entertained," said Miss Vincent.

And the staff, thought Mireille, noting the happy dance the one called May was performing. "Is that one stuck?" she asked, pointing to one display on the counter filled with perfectly ordinary cigars.

"Huh? Oh, no, no." Miss Vincent popped one in her mouth and took a bite out of it. "Beef jerky. A lot of our customers are trying to quit nowadays, so..."

"Ah. Quite a set-up; I imagine the tobacco and candles throws off most of the inspection teams, then?"

"Well, one of those JDF folks brought in a bomb-sniffing dog a while back," recalled Miss Vincent. "I think it went into shock after thirty seconds."

"Although it's you I'm most impressed by," she said, nodding at Miss Vincent. "You can't be more than twenty, thirty years old, correct?"

"A bit of makeup goes a long way," she replied.

Kirika gasped as the little woman pulled a rocket launcher off a shelf and aimed it at her. "Booooooom," said the one called May.

"Oh, knock it off, May," said Miss Vincent, rolling her eyes. "Go check on the DPU-discarding-sabot rounds or something."

"Glee!" The little woman jumped for joy. Something round soared out of one of her sleeves.

"Grenade!" shouted Mireille and Kirika. The former dived behind some body armour, while the latter instinctively leapt for the window.

"Oops," said the one called May, as Kirika crashed into the security shutters face-first.

"Ow," whimpered Kirika, from the floor.

"Out! Out! Out!" shouted Miss Vincent.

The one called May cringed and scurried into the back. Milliseconds later, she returned, snatched up the grenade, kissed it, popped it in her blouse, and scurried into the back. Several seconds later, she leaned through the curtain, squeaked a sheepish "Sorry!" and then scurried into the back. Again.

"I am so, _so_ sorry, Miss," said Miss Vincent to Mireille. "Is she all right?"

"Yeah, she's pretty tough," said Mireille, helping her partner to her feet.

"The room is spinning again," said a slightly dazed Kirika.

"Anyway, what're you interested in? Handguns? The SOCOM's pretty popular nowadays, but you look more of a Walther kind of woman."

"And you'd be right," said Mireille, with a touch of admiration. "But we're looking for something a bit heavier than what we usually use."

"Assault rifle?" suggested Miss Vincent. "The FN P90?" she asked, pointing it out on the wall. "Compact, robust construction, 50-round clip, tears through armour like butter?"

"No," said Mireille, thoughtfully, "I don't think that will do the job."  
  
"Machine gun?"

"No."

"M-79 grenade launcher? Stinger missile? CIA surplus, very cheap?"

"Tempting, but no."

"Uh, I've got a prototype particle beam in the back? The Japanese Defence Force should really change its locks once in a while," she added, upon seeing her customer's expression.

"Look," said Mireille, seeing how this wasn't getting anywhere, "we need something that can take out _this_." She placed a picture of her target (eating an ice-cream cone while using a rusty pike to behead some small beige-coloured creature) on the counter.

Miss Vincent gave a low whistle. "Wow, you're up against _her?_ You're either very, very good, or very, very stu -- ambitious."

"Look," said Mireille, slightly irritated by that last comment, "I came here because I heard you were the best. I heard that you were the most trusted, reliable, and well-stocked arms broker on three continents. I heard that you were one of the most successful bounty hunters in the business, and that you have a reputation for always using the right gun for the right job. And I want to know, what can take _her_ out? Permanently?"

"Okay, okay, just give me a second." She drummed her fingers on the countertop. "Well, you're within city limits, so _that's_ out of the question," she muttered, with a nod to the nuclear weapon suspended overhead. "And I don't think any conventional weapon will give you the results you need..."

"So, there's nothing, then?"

"Hang on, hang on, I'm thinking!" She paced a little. "Like I said, there's no _conventional_ weapon that could do the job, but..."

"But?"

"There is...a legend," began Miss Vincent.

"This should be interesting..."

"In around 1235 A.D., there was this group of cultists in Japan called the White Hands. They were doomsayers, and believed an apocalyptic battle between good and evil would occur during their lifetime. They approached the legendary sword smith Rattori Banzo and demanded that he create arms for this upcoming struggle. He agreed, and after seven years, forged the twin swords Tenchi no Kami and Chiisainezumi no Kami, the ultimate blades of good and evil. Realizing that the cultists wished to use the blades to actually start the apocalypse, he slew them all, but was himself killed in the process."

"The legend gets a bit fuzzy at this point. Apparently the swords were separated, and wandered the earth for hundreds of years, turning up in all sorts of legends under various names; I won't bore you with the details, since I don't know them. Obscure news reports say that the blades were finally reunited by one Azagoth the Terrible on June 9, 1817, the date of the last heliocentric planetary alignment. I think he was trying to raise Cthulhu or Sir Issac Newton or something. Anyway, he was stopped by some league of less than ordinary gentlepersons seconds before completing the ceremony. This shattered both blades to bits. An alchemist known only as Rudyard Kipling later stole the shards from a high-security vault in the Tower of London, and forged them into a set of shells. Rumour has it that the bullet that struck Archduke Ferdinand came from that set of shells. They are said to bring woe, death, and destruction wherever they go, and to slay anything they strike. But no one knows where, or when, they will turn up next."

Mireille let this all sink in. "Ordinarily," she began, "I would slap you for wasting my time like that. But since I'm desperate, and since you've enough ordinances within arms reach to level a small city, I'll bite. Do you have them, and how much?"

"No."

"So," said Mireille, seething, "in other words, you've just wasted ten minutes of my life?"

"I meant, 'no, we don't have those, but we do have these Taiwanese knock-offs.'" She plunked a ratty-looking cardboard box onto the counter. "9 millimetre, right?" she asked, flipping the lid open.

The lights in the store faded. The box glowed ghoulishly. A chill wind howled about the room, rattling the shelves. Chthonic voices chattered from dark corners. And Mireille swore she could hear _someone_ whispering the text of The Grapes of Wrath in her left ear. In Swedish.

"Uh, yeah, we think that's just a little quirk in the production process," said Miss Vincent of the paranormal phenomena.

Mireille ignored her. There were twelve bullets, in two rows of six. Half were gold, and glowed with menacing red aura, as if already drenched in the blood of innocents. The others were silver, and radiated a frigid, electric light that hinted at divine retribution. Each was covered in subtle sigils somehow engraved both on, above, and below the metal's surface. Entranced, she reached out with one cautious hand to touch them.

Miss Vincent snatched the box away and glared at her. "Never, _ever_, touch them like that," she warned.

Mireille shook off the enchantment. "Oh, you mean, not without those rune and gemstone-encrusted gloves I see pinned to the lid?"

Miss Vincent raised an eyebrow. "Not without paying, I mean."

"Oh, right. Kirika?"

"Mm?" she said, as if she'd just dozed off.

"The suitcase?"

Kirika set the attaché case on the counter and clicked it open. "This should do it, I think," said her partner.

"Hmm," said Miss Vincent, thoughtfully examining the case's contents.

"Is it enough?" asked Mireille.

"Well, it's a bit tough to tell, actually. Seeing as you've offered me a carrot cake and all."

Mireille blinked, then did a double-take at the case's contents. "Kirika!" she scolded. "_Other_ case! The other case!" Her partner mumbled some sleepy apologies and trudged towards the door, where she paused.

"Mireille? I don't have the -- ow!" The car keys pinged off her forehead. She collected them and left.

"Sorry about that," said Mireille visibly embarrassed. "Jet lag. Amnesia. Existential angst. Y'know."

"Ah, the terrors of youth," replied Miss Vincent, nodding sagely. "Although it is a nice cake. I like the rabbit in the corner. Now _that's_ more like it," she added, as Kirika set a second open case on the counter.

"And?" said Mireille, as the shopkeeper gave the cash a quick count.

"Not even close," she said, shutting the case with a snap.

"What?! But there's over --"

"Listen, lady," said Miss Vincent, with a wry look, "I know government agents and secret cabalists who'll give me triple what you have here to even look at these babies." Mireille seethed.

"We'll throw in the cake," said Kirika.

"Eh?" said Mireille.

Miss Vincent considered this. "Okay, okay. One of each, and that's just because you're cute, and because that is one delicious-looking cake. Man, if I had a spoon handy..."

Kirika produced one from her sleeve. Mireille gave her a look.

"We were out of forks," she explained.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

"News reports say that the target has been spotted somewhere in this park," said Mireille, as she pulled over next to it. "Most of the civilians have already fled the area, but there were reports that she had a hostage of some sort; we'll have to aim carefully. Remember; according to Miss Vincent, we have to hit her with both rounds at the same time for maximum effect. Stay close, and use your ear-plugs."

"Eh?" said Kirika, who already had them in.

Mireille sighed, stepped out of the car, and rolled for the cover of a nearby bush, her partner following like a shadow. Moving silently, flitting from tree to tree, they made their way to the centre of the park, following the trail of dropped books, snapped branches, and trampled grass that marked the panicked flight of the park's usual inhabitants.

Kirika touched her arm, and pointed. Mireille saw the distant column of smoke, and nodded. Cautiously, the two hands of death stalked forth to the edge of a clearing. Mireille raised a set of binoculars.

The mad, orange-haired woman, dressed in a puffy chef's hat and a blood-stained apron, had set up a large black cauldron above a small cooking fire in the centre of the clearing. She was selecting bottles (apparently at random) off a large wheeled spice and condiment cabinet next to her, pouring and sprinkling substances into the pot. Occasionally, she would pause to salivate over a small dog she had trussed up to a nearby stick. The dog looked rather miserable.

Mireille motioned for her partner to follow her lead. She crawled commando-style out onto the grass, using a slight depression in the land for cover. Soon she was within ten meters of the crazed culinary auteur. At this range, the earplugs lost some of their effectiveness; fortunately, the woman was talking so quickly that all Mireille could hear was a sort of high-pitched squealing. She nodded to her partner, and mouthed the words, "On three."

One...two...

And then, with an ear-bleeding shriek of "In yah go!" the woman grabbed the trussed up canine and prepared to toss it bodily into the pot.

There was a rush of air behind her. "Kirika!" cried Mireille. Then the girl was airborne, flipping, twisting, and grabbing the helpless dog right from the immortal's hands. She landed, rolled, and drew her weapon. Mireille gasped, and barely had time to aim before her partner pulled the trigger.

The barrel spat purple-green flames, and roared exactly like an express train from Hell. Mireille gasped as the recoil flung her onto her back. Briefly, she had a vision of vast, malignant horde of scale and steel encrusted things, wrapped in flames of blood, screaming in murderous tongues, charging across the field, scorching and churning the earth in their passage. A second host, one of light, wings, and glittering spears, soared forth to meet it. Betwixt the two stood the woman, bearing a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and a rather confused facial expression. The forces of Armageddon rushed towards her, met, swirled, clashed --

Mireille barely looked away in time. Strangely, there was no noise, only light. The shockwave lifted her off the ground and hurled her through the air. Instinctively, she latched onto a passing tree; just in time, too, as it saved her from a gristly death from the implosion that followed seconds later. For a few moments, the great wind held her perpendicular to the ground, as leaves, branches, and a couple of squirrels whipped by her at just under the speed of sound. Then, mercifully, just as she felt her grip starting to slip, the deafening wind roared itself into silence. She could breathe again. She could hear again.

Someone was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Kirika?

No, wait, she thought. It's me. Stop that, me.

She unlatched her arms from the severely-bent larch she'd hooked onto, slumped to the ground, and then opened her eyes.

What was once an arboreal paradise was now a blasted, desolate land. A medium sized crater, the walls of which were fused into something like solid glass, had replaced the centre of the clearing. Surrounding it was several meters worth of incinerated plant life; several small fires still smouldered in it. In a sort of bizarre reversal of the Tunguska explosion, all the vegetation surrounding the clearing was now almost level with the ground, pointing towards its centre.

Making a mental note to fill out a positive Customer Satisfaction survey on her next visit to Rumschmit 'n Pat's, Mireille removed her earplugs (they did nothing for that irritating ringing she was hearing anyway) and took a few shaky steps towards the crater. "Kirika?" she asked, softly. "Kirika? Kirika!"

A flame-kissed bush rustled as a short Japanese girl stepped out of it, cradling her stomach.

"Uh, are you okay?" asked Mireille. Kirika nodded, softly, got to her feet, and joined up with her partner.

That's when she saw it.

"Haven't we been over this already?" sighed Mireille, as the newly-liberated hostage licked her partner's chin.

"I will call her 'Buttons,'" whispered Kirika, ignoring her.

"Yep, definitely getting some serious _déjà vu_ here," muttered Mireille. The dog yapped in excitement.

"Did we get her?" asked Kirika.  
  
Mireille gestured at the surroundings. "I think we can consider her well and truly 'got,' don't you?"

"What's that, then?" asked Kirika, pointing.

Mireille looked.

In the exact centre of the clearing there was a very tiny point of light that hurt the eyes when she stared at it. When she squinted, Mireille thought she could distinguish a tiny spiral of particulates circling about a point of absolute blackness, forming two long spires that radiated outwards in opposite directions as they piled up about that point.

"Well," she began, "my Hawking's a bit rusty, but if I were to make a guess, I'd say that's some sort of microscopic black hole."

"Oh." Kirika scratched the dog under one of its ears. "Is it safe to leave it there?"

"Can _you_ move a quantum singularity?"

She pondered this. "No?" she replied.

"Well, then, there you go."

"But this is a public park. What if someone got hurt by it?"

Mireille considered the moral implications. "I suppose we could make some sort of a sign," she mused. "'Warning! Black Hole! Do Not Eat!' or something like that."

"You'll do much more than that!" said a voice behind her.

Two guns pointed at it in less than a heartbeat. Two professional assassins were slightly confused several heartbeats later.

"What...the...?" said Mireille.

"It's a galaxy," said Kirika. "With arms. And nice nails."

"What...who are you?" said Mireille, getting a grip on herself.

"I am the Cosmic Will of the Universe," said...well...the Cosmic Will of the Universe (CWotU).

"And?"

"I am that which makes sure all things happen in their due course."

"...Aaand?"

"Well, mostly I just resurrect that stupid girl whenever she gets herself killed," said the CWotU, with some irritation, "but that's what I _would_ be doing if it wasn't for her."

"So, you're the one responsible for her immortality," said Mireille.

"Yes, and I must say, you've been a great source of irritation to me in the past, Miss Mireille Bouquet. I can't turn my back five minutes to create an interesting species of protozoa in a pond of primordial goo five thousand years from now without you coming along and shooting her head off. Shame on you!"

"Ow!" she said, as the CWotU bonked her on the head.

"And you've certainly given me a job this time. A black hole? Honestly, such overkill. And don't think you'll get away scot free this time either. I've given you plenty of chances in the past (27, I think), but this is the last straw! Let's see," said the CWotU, looking thoughtful, "should I rewind time back to the moment of creation and edit you out of existence, or just turn you into a brainless blonde bimbo? Decisions, decisions, decis --"

Mireille shot the CWotU seven times in what was hopefully its face.

"Well, I never!" it said. Then it bled a bit, made some choking noises, and exploded in a small, localized supernova.

Mireille blew the smoke from the barrel of her Walther. She noticed her partner giving her a look of shock.

"How..." began Kirika.

"You never know until you try," replied Mireille, smiling.

_eat the path_

[Author's note: and why have the Gunsmith Cats relocated to F Province? Taxation, of course.]


	6. Ham Quiddam

**Chapter 6: Ham Quiddam**

"Ready?"

"Huh?" Kirika blinked, disorientated.

Where was she?

She looked.

In...a tree? A park?

There was a gun in her hand; a HK G11 assault rifle, by the looks of it, with optional optical scope. But where did it come from?

"Kirika?" said a voice in her ear.

"Mireille?" she whispered into her lapel mike. "What's going on?"

"Come on, Kirika, focus! We're on a hit, remember?"

"What hit?"

Mireille sighed. "Look, Kirika, I know there's a lot on your mind right now. It's the same with me. But if you don't get it together, you're going to get us both killed! Keep your eyes and ears open and watch for the target, okay?"

The target, thought Kirika, nodding. Of course.

"_Huh. A government job. We're moving up in the world, I guess."_

_Kirika peeped over her shoulder at the monitor. "The JDF?"_

"_In cooperation with the CIA," nodded Mireille. "Apparently, they've recently discovered a sort of mind-control cult in operation somewhere in northern Japan."_

"_Through a campaign of subtle intimidation, emotional manipulation, and mass marketing, the cultists have obtained direct control over all social, political, and economic interaction amongst the townsfolk. Many are now their willing slaves, tending to their every need; some even transport them around town on their shoulders and feed them by hand."_

"_JDF forces sent in a commando team to liberate the town several years ago. Unfortunately for them, the cultists turned out to be experts at urban warfare and sabotage. According to the team's sole survivor, the cultists used squad tactics and a complicated system of underground tunnels to outflank the commandoes and strike from close range. The cultists would swarm their targets, dismantle their weapons, and then gnaw the poor souls to death. There's a lot in his report about 'sharp teeth' and 'the lending of little paws,' but that's not important. What's important is that this effectively halted all further JDF efforts to retake the town." _

"_The mission wasn't a total loss; the team discovered that the cultists had created a powerful new narcotic. Using selective breeding, the cultists had created a type of flower whose seeds contained a sort of natural PCP; this appeared to be the source of their extraordinary speed. Moreover, they had dedicated large portions of the city to its cultivation, and looked ready to export it."_

"_At this point, the CIA got involved. Already concerned with the drug situations in Colombia and Afghanistan, the last thing they needed was another one in Asia. They sent in three agents; two were captured and killed within days, the third is our current source of information."_

"_Is the agent reliable?" asked Kirika._

"_One of their best," said Mireille. "Known only by his serial number, SN ZR, he managed to infiltrate the upper echelons of the cult's theocracy as a sleeper agent. What he discovered worried the CIA enough to call us in."_

_She pulled up another file. "Project Zwei Hahm. The cultists have bought out a major snack food company, and plan to use it to distribute their seed drugs to schoolchildren world wide. Coupled with a massive subliminal marketing and indoctrination campaign, the cultists hope to achieve nothing less than total world domination within three years."_

"_Ambitious," noted Kirika. _

"_Our objective is to take out the leader of the cult, shown here," continued Mireille. She punched up a picture. _

_Kirika blinked. "Um, isn't that a..."_

"_Religious fanatic, charismatic leader, and brilliant military tactician? Yes. Code named HM 1. The CIA believes he's the lynchpin to the entire Project: his lieutenant, known only as Le Patron, is coordinating the logistics, but without his leadership, the cultists would fall into disarray." Mireille stretched. "Well, can't say I've ever saved the world before, but if the pay's always this good..." _

"I see him," said the voice over the earpiece. "Coming from your left, fifty meters."

Kirika shook herself from her recollection and listened. Heartbeat, wind, traffic, rustling leaves... Recalling the target's profile, she focused, and filtered out each sound one by one until...

There. That was it. A sound, like the world's smallest machine gun, was approaching from the east. Thirty meters. She flicked the safety on her rifle. Twenty. She raised it. Ten. She aimed at the base of a large tree next to where the target would emerge. Five meters. She steadied her breathing, slowed her heart rate, tightened her grip...

A barely audible rustle of leaves, and two tiny, rat-like creatures leapt from the bush. One was grey with black patches, and wore a ceremonial yellow iron cap. The other was considerably smaller, but had a sort of manic energy about it, bouncing about and chanting some sort of religious mantra ("_Bhadda-bhadda bhadda-bhadda_").

She squeezed the trigger.

The small one screamed, and dodged at speeds impossible. Momentarily surprised, Kirika fired again. And again. And again. The crack­-a-crack of three round bursts echoed throughout the parkland as countless bullets, fired with uncanny accuracy, pulverized every inch of earth around her target, who was somehow managing to avoid them all. The larger cultist pulled his leader behind a large rock. Moments later, both emerged, firing very small Kalashnikov rifles wildly into the air, shouting obscenities in an unknown language ("_Koosh koosh! Peekaah Peekaaaaaah!"_). Kirika kept firing.

"Kirika?" came the voice in her ear.

"Can't hit him," she replied, still shooting. "Too fast."

"Suppression fire," replied the voice. "Lock him down." There was a metallic rasping noise over the earpiece. "Let's see him dodge this."

Even above the gunshots, Kirika still heard the distant 'click' several meters to her left. There was a rocket's roar, followed by the shredding of leaves and branches. Through the targeting scope, Kirika saw the cult leader freeze, snarl, and raise one defiant fist towards his oncoming doom. Oddly enough, the fist also held a sunflower seed. Then she turned and shielded her face.

The explosion shook both sky and earth with a great, resonant _boom._ Dirt scattered, wood splintered, and trees bucked and swayed in the shockwave. Steadying herself in her perch, Kirika turned to look.

The great tree was blasted to smithereens, replaced by a sizeable crater. Flaming bits of wood and (presumably) rodent were raining down in a fifty-meter radius. A large cloud of smoke loomed over the carnage.

Something small and colourful flitted by her. She grabbed it.

It was some sort of tiny, severely burnt, yellow cloak.

Her adrenaline-fuelled combat-trance drained away, and the full reality of her situation finally hit her. "No..." she breathed.

She slid to the ground, numb. She leaned against the tree, staring at the rifle in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. Countless questions swirled about her like the ashes on the wind.

"Well, that did it." Kirika jumped. She hadn't even noticed her partner come over. Mireille squinted at the distant crater. "Looks like we got the central command bunker too. Should make for a healthy bonus, I think."

"Mireille..."

"Mm?"

"We just assassinated a hamster."

"Yep."

"With a military-grade automatic weapon."

"Uh-huh."

"And a bazooka."

"A-yup."

"It's...not right," said Kirika.

Mireille looked over her shoulder. "We can worry about the moral issues later. Right now, we better get out of here. Although I doubt anyone will try to stop us," she added, with a nod to the bazooka on her shoulder.

"No, not that. I mean, all of this. It's...wrong, somehow," said Kirika, searching for the words as she went along.

"Huh?"

"I mean, why are we wearing these clothes?"

"To blend in, of course," explained Mireille, wearing a hamster hat, hamster shoes, sunflower-pattered pants and shoes, and a, "I [Heart] Ham-Hams!" shirt.

"And why are we using these weapons?"

"We discussed this already; these guys are fast and vicious in close, right? So we hang back 100 meters and use an accurate automatic with a high ROF. And if you missed, I'd go with this," she said, meaning the rocket launcher. "You can't have forgotten already..."

"No, I didn't."

"Good."

"_Because we never had that conversation._"

Mireille opened her mouth to reply with, "Well, that's a novel excuse." It came out as, "Guh?"

"Mireille," said Kirika, suddenly determined. "When did we arrive here in town?"

"Uh, yesterday morning. Why --"

"What was the weather?"

"Cloudy, I think."

"What flight did we take?" she said, continuing the barrage.

"Uh, Japan Air Flight 507...or was it 886..."

"What was the in-flight meal?"

"Chicken. No, steak. Fish?"

"Where did we get this equipment from?"

"Now that's easy," said Mireille, clearly relieved. "We picked them up from the Army and...Navy...store?" Her relief vanished as soon as she realized she didn't believe what she was, in fact, saying. "What the hell?"

"Mireille," said Kirika. "Something. Is. Wrong. Here. None of this makes any sense."

"Yeah," she replied, suddenly uncomfortable. "Little hamsters with big ambitions? Mind-control? How could we have possibly believed that?"

"It gets worse," said Kirika. "Think: where were we last April 17?"

She did. "April...that was F-City, wasn't it? The Excel case."

"But weren't we _also_ at home in France at that time?"

Mireille was stunned. "That's right," she said. "That damned tea party..."

"And what about February?"

"Tokyo. Chiyo Mihama. No...wait. Russia. Yuri Nazarov."

"It's the same with me. It, it's like there's two pasts: the one we lived, and the one we remember."

Mireille nodded, deep in thought. "Yeah, you're right. Like, I _remember_ that my very first hit was in London, but I _know_ it was actually Versailles. Although Uncle Claude was wearing that dress," she added to herself.

"And if we didn't live these memories," continued her partner, "where did they come from?"

"You think they were implanted somehow? That someone's manipulating us?" She gave this serious consideration. "It would explain a lot. For example, you're a heck of a lot more talkative than usual."

"And you're more bitchy."

"What!?" she snarled. "You little -- oh. You're right. Excellent observation."

"Mm," replied Kirika, who was, in fact, lying. "But if that's true, then who? And why?"

"Why ask why?" said a familiar voice behind them.

Kirika gasped. Then she gasped again, when she realized she was sitting down. In a wicker chair. In a rose garden. At tea.

"What the -- you?!" said Mireille, seated next to her.

"Yes. Me," said the Soldat with the penchant for grapes.

A click, and Mireille had a gun on her. "Altena," she snarled. "You're dead. Dead! Why are you here? And why the hell are you dressed like a clown!?"

"'Raise the saplings with water, light, and quality entertainment,'" recited Altena, adjusting her red prosthetic nose. She was seated across from them, and was enjoying a cup of tea with lemon.

"You're not Altena," said Mireille. "Who are you? Who put you up to this? Answer me!"

"Oi, keep it down," slurred a voice. "I gotta headache." A purple haired girl in exceptionally dirty clothes stumbled up to the table, clearly intoxicated.

"Chloe?" said Kirika, horrified. "No...no..."

"Don't be afraid, my children," counselled Altena. "All is right with the world." A bit of water squirted from the flower on her lapel.

"I'm not scared," said Mireille, shaking. "I don't _get_ scared. I get angry. I'm angry now. I want answers. NOW!"

"Ugh, my head," said Chloe, staggering. "Hair o' the dog, I guesses." She plucked a wine bottle from the recesses of her vomit-stained, pink frilly dress, took a huge swig from it, leaned back too far, and flopped to the ground. "Yeah, that's some daaaaaaamn fine $#$#," she said, from beneath the table.

"Oh, you naughty girl," said Altena, giving her a kick with her big floppy squeaky shoes. "You've been into my 'special spritzer' cabinet again, haven't you?"

"No I haven't," she whined, cradling the wine.

"You are _grounded_, young lady!"

"I'm a grown woman," whined Chloe. "Won't lemme drink, won't lemme drive...d'ya know what all that walkin' does to my shoes? Stop treatin' me like a li'll kid!"

"I will when you show a little maturity," replied the clown priestess, taking a sip of tea. "And you're far too young to drive."

"How 'm I supposed t' meet curfew when I gotta freakin' WALK back home? From Switzerland?! Huh!?" Chloe staggered to her feet and gave Altena her best (drunken, bloodshot) death-stare. "Not that there's nothin' good here. No cable, no satellite, no ADSL...how'm I supposed to play _Splinter Cell_ over a 28.8, huh?" she shouted, grabbing her mother-figure by the lapels.

"I'm over here, dear?" waved Altena.

Chloe dropped the small shrubbery she was trying to throttle and waved an unsteady hand at Kirika. "_She_ gets to stay up late. She getsh t' pick her own damn clothes. Wha' she got that I dunna, eh?"

Altena shook her head, sadly. "Kids these days. Such a bother, aren't they, Mireille?"

"Uh..." she replied, mildly confused.

"Relax, my child," said the priestess, reaching over to caress Kirika's hair. "Nothing to be afraid of. Look, I've made you a balloon animal, isn't it nice?" She proffered a pink-and-yellow inflatable version of the Scales of Justice. Kirika looked at it, recoiled, and whimpered in fright.

"Get away from her!" Mireille swatted the woman's hand aside and clapped the gun to her head. Kirika was clutching her head, trembling. "Answers. NOW!"

"Heeeeey cutie," said Chloe, slithering up to her.

"Wha -- hey! Back! Back I say!"

She draped an arm over her shoulder and drew herself close. Very close.

"Y'know," she slurred, "I always wanted to try it with an older woman."

"Wh -- get off me!" said Mireille, desperately trying to extricate herself.

The young woman hugged her tight. Things squished. "Ehhhhh?" she said, with a wink.

"A splendid idea," said Altena.

"!!!!" said Mireille , dropping her gun in shock.

"Why don't we join in, little one?" she said to the quivering mass of terror that was Kirika. "It would be...educational?"

"Haw haw haw!" said Chloe.

"(Whimper)," said Mireille.

Chloe leaned in close, lips poised to --

Two shots rang out.

Two women fell to the ground, returned to the dead from whence they came.

Mireille took a few seconds to regain her composure, and then a couple handfuls more when she noticed the blood on her face. "Thanks," she managed to say, eventually. "Kirika?"

The still-smoking Berretta trembled in her hands. She was hyperventilating, breath coming in gasps. Mireille cautiously pried the gun from her partner's fingers, and sat down next to her. "Kirika?" she said, softly. "Are you...?"

"They...they're dead..." she whispered.

"Yes."

"They're dead. Again. I saw them die. I..._felt_...her die," she whispered, eyes passing over the fallen. "And then, then they were here, again, but they were dead, and they couldn't be, but they were..."

"It, it's all right, Kirika," counselled Mireille. "That wasn't really them. They weren't the real thing."

"Not...real?" She trembled. "But...what is...real? What I see is false; what I remember, fake."

"Get a hold of yourself, Kirika!" said her partner. "You're stronger than this, I know it!"

"Am I?" She looked down at her own hands, those hands that had moved, had killed, before she'd even realized they had. "Am I...real? Are you? Is any of this real? How can we know?"

Her partner swallowed a lump in her throat. "I...I don't know. But we _will_ figure this out," she said. "We're going to find out who's behind all this, and make them pay." She took her hand and squeezed it. "We'll do it together. Okay?" Kirika nodded. "Now, let's get out of here --"

The still-bleeding corpses of Altena and Chloe leapt up from the ground on strings invisible, surrounded by flames. "We'll swallow your souls!" they howled. "_We'll swallow your souls!_"

Kirika and Mireille grabbed each other, and screamed.

Darkness.

_come below_

_the long sleep ends_


	7. Where are Monsters in Dreams

**Chapter 7: Where are Monsters in Dreams**

She awoke with a gasp.

"Kirika!"

Gone.

Where...?

The room swam into focus. It was large, with low tables and chairs, a crowded bookshelf, an expansive wardrobe, and lit everywhere with the golden light of a summer afternoon. A light breeze blew in through the open windows, the diaphanous silk draperies flowing upon it. She was on the largest four poster bed she had ever seen in her life.

Where in the world was she?

And then her eyes fell upon something next to her, and she knew all too well.

"No..." She reached for the tan-coloured teddy bear, and saw her hands for the first time. "No!"

They were small. Tiny, even. Like those of a child.

The bear was just as soft as she remembered. The button eyes, the velvet patches on its paws, they were all there. She clutched it tight. "How...?" she whispered.

She slid out of the bed. The wardrobe, the table and tea set, the drawings on the walls...this was her room.

Was?

No, _is_, silly, she thought.

Now, what was she doing? Oh yes. It'd been a hot afternoon. Her father wanted to take her out on the boat; she was tired. She took a nap. Hey, it was still early! She could go out on the water before dinner! She giggled, clicked open the door to her room, and skipped into the tiled hallway.

It was unusually empty.

She stepped over to the kitchen, intent on snacks "Miss Marie? Miss Marie?"

No answer, save for a pot left boiling on the stove.

Remembering her kitchen safety, she stood on her tip toes and turned it off. Forgetting it, she grabbed a rickety-old orange crate, pushed it to the counter, climbed it, grabbed two chocolate-chip-and-raisin cookies from the jar (one for her, one for the bear), and wandered out the side door. "Miss Marie? Mister George?" she called out over the garden.

A small butterfly heard her, and explained that the two had run screaming off into the fields a few minutes ago.

She thanked the butterfly, and made a mental note to ask her father to cut both their salaries for this transgression. Some part of her thought that something wasn't quite right about this whole situation, especially since the butterfly spoke in Cantonese instead of its usual Spanish; she silenced it with a well placed cookie to the mouth. Mmm, choco-raisiney goodness, she thought. She offered the second cookie to the bear (Wuffles). He declined, so she ate that one too.

Where was everyone?

The patio! Of course!

Back into the house, through the kitchen, and around the corner she went, down the central corridor with its two-toned tiled floor.

It felt...familiar?

Of course it was; she'd lived here her entire life, didn't she?

But, she thought, did I live here my entire life...right now?

She stopped, confused. Strange voices clashed about her head. Some wanted her to get on with it, pass through that door, and talk to Papa; others, distant ones, shrill with fear and loathing, screamed at her to get out, get away, run, run anywhere, any place but here. And she swore there was another voice, just on the edge of perception, saying something important, but drowned out by all the others.

Funny, she thought, it usually isn't _that_ crowded up there. She wondered, briefly, if she had reached into Miss Marie's stash of 'special' snacks by accident, then tossed the thought aside, recalling that there was a distinct lack of flaming purple spiders crawling under her skin this time.

She set off down the hallway. The long, _long_ hallway, made all the longer by the crushing sense of dread that seemed to weigh down her every step. She could hear her parents; it sounded like they were arguing about something.

Or some_one_, said a thought unbidden.

It soon vanished, drowned out by the screaming and crying of everything else in her head. The voices had grown in number and volume with every step she'd taken. It was getting quite irritating, and, she had to admit, a little bit scary.

"Um, excuse me," she said to the voices in her head, "could you keep it down a bit? All the wailing and doom-saying is starting to get on my nerves."

Suddenly, the voices stopped. They turned, looked at her (variously with pity, anger, resentment, and fear), shook their collective heads, and walked away.

Mireille was surprised, confused, and slightly terrified, in that order. Surprised, because the voices had actually listened; confused, because the aforementioned voices had turned, looked, and walked, despite being non-corporeal entities; and terrified, because now it was just a little too quiet up there.

Come to think of it, she thought of it, it's a little too quiet _out_ _here_, too. Did they stop arguing?

She pressed her ear to the door.

Huh, she thought, guess they --

Two shots rang out.

She jumped back.

Relax, she thought, it's not what you think...it's probably just Papa teaching the delivery boy "the meaning of respect" again, that's all. Everything's calm, everything's cool. Nothing to worry about.

She clutched Mister Wuffles, all the same.

Hesitantly, she reached for the door.

The sound of the third shot ripped through her body, pierced her heart, and echoed about the dark corners of her mind.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes went wide. Her limbs froze.

And then panic took over. Her heart pounded. Every voice in her head screamed at once. She gasped, and burst through the door.

There were three bodies on the floor.

"Mama! Papa!" She raced to the fallen, slid on the marble, and grasped their hands. "No...no," she wept. "This can't be happening! It can't! No, not again!" She buried her tiny face in her mother's breast. "Papa...Mama...no..." She wept.

Something caressed her hair.

She gasped, and looked up.

Tears brimmed in her eyes, her lips quivered. "Mama?"

"It's all right, Mireille." Her mother rose from the ground, as did her father and brother nearby.

Mireille backed away in confusion. "B-b-but," she stammered, "I, I thought..."

"Silly girl," said her mother, smiling beatifically. "You must have been dreaming again." Her father laughed, softly.

She sniffled. "Yeah...I, I guess I was." She smiled. "It didn't happen. It wasn't real. It was just a drea --"

A flash of memory. Golden light. A fallen watch. Artistically-splattered blood.

She dropped Mr. Wuffles, and clutched her head, trying to shake off the imagery. "No, no! Not real, not real!"

Some force in her mind shoved her head up, tore open her eyes, and made her see the truth.

She screamed.

"What is it, Mireille?" asked her mother, blood still dripping from a great hole in her forehead. Her father and brother looked on, concerned, as their still-pumping chest wounds painted their shirts crimson.

She scrambled back until she hit the wall. "Dead!" she squeaked. "Dead, dead! You're all dead! I, I saw you die! I remember it! You can't be here! You're dead! No..."

A swish of fabric, and her mother was by her side again. The smell of fine Italian perfume and spilt blood assailed her senses. "Oh, my poor, confused little girl," she said.

"But...but how?" Tears stained her cheeks. "I...I see you, and you're talking, you're okay, but I know you can't be, and I, I remember that day, but, but that day is today, now, but it isn't, and --"

Her mother shushed her, and folded her into a loving, sanguinary embrace. "It wasn't real, dear. None of it was."

"But..."

"None of us are."

Even through the terror and grief, Mireille still had the presence of mind to say, "Eh?"

Her mother spread her arms. "None of this, none of us...are real. We cannot die, for we have never lived."

Her head was spinning, heavy with confusion. "W-what?"

"We are all just figments of another's imagination. We live, breathe, and die at His command, at the will of the great Author of our lives." She smiled, her face now a mask of blood. "So you see, my child, there is no need for fear, no need for sadness. Trust in His will, for it...is..._all._"

Some distant voice fought its way to the forefront of Mireille's conscience. "No, no, that isn't right! We're not puppets, we're not! We, we live our own lives, think for ourselves, make our own way! Our..._my_ will is my own!"

Her mother laughed, softly. "My foolish little girl." She leaned in close. "You're not real, either."

She gasped. Her mother had seized her hand. "Look," she said, dragging it in front of her face.

She did.

It looked...cell-shaded?

"No," she whimpered. "No, no, no, no no no! I don't believe you! I can't! I won't!"

"You already do," said her mother, sadly.

Mireille gasped. Her father's pocket watch was suspended from her neck, locked in place by a chain of pearls. Its arms moved forward, implacably. "No! No no no," she sobbed.

"Join us," said her family, reaching for her.

"_**NO!**_" As she screamed, she tore the watch from her neck. The chain snapped; pearls sang through the air, as did the watch itself, hurled by her hand. It dashed against her mother's forehead and burst asunder.

The world shattered. The patio, her mother, her father and brother, the heavens, the earth...they split and cracked into innumerable shards, shards that passed over, around, and through her, cutting at her heart and mind. Each cut brought another memory, painful ones: memories of blood, tears, broken glass and bodies, of dark places in the world, and the blackness of the human soul.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the fractured pieces of reality fell away, leaving only a frightened girl, curled into a ball, weeping.

She drifted in an ocean of pain, grief, and confusion. "Not real, not real," she whispered to herself. "Not really them, not really here, not real, not any of it." She sniffled. "It's all an illusion, a hallucination, a dream, a dream, it's got to be a dream, it must be a dream, it --"

Off in the distance, she spotted the light of realization, and struck out for it.

"It..._is_...a dream," she said.

She opened her eyes, and got to her shaking feet.

The patio was so different now, she thought. And yet exactly as it should be, thought another part of her.

The floor was cracked and stained by age. Moss and mildew covered every tile, infested every crack in the wall. Part of the far wall lay crumbled upon the ground.

"A dream. This...is a dream." A fragment of information slipped in through the storm of argument in her head. "A lucid dream. Yeah, that's it. One of those ones where you know you're dreaming!"

She wandered out into the middle of the patio. "And if I _know_ I'm asleep," she said to herself, "then I can wake myself up! Okay! Here we go." She took a deep breath, and clenched her fists. "Wake up."

Nothing.

"Wake...up!"

A few birds chirped in the distance.

She closed her eyes, and focused. "Wake up. Wake...up. Wake. Up. Wake up wake up wake up wakeupwakeupwakeup wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwake --"

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

She moaned.

Every part of body ached. Someone had hit her over the head with a sack of doorknobs, by the feel of it. And possibly in the stomach, she added, once the first wave of nausea hit.

She managed to ease open one eyelid.

Through the blurred, churning mess that was her vision, she thought she recognized what could, in some circumstances, be called the ceiling of her apartment. Ceiling, she thought, muzzily. Good. Better than floor. Or vomit. Or cow dung. Now, _that_ was a bad trip.

She moaned, again, and tried to will the other eyelid open.

Someone laughed in her ear. A great, leathery hand with claws of steel closed over her vision, and pressed down.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

"Oof! Owww..." Young Mireille picked herself off the stone floor, spitting out lichen. That wasn't normal, she thought, her head spinning. "Maybe I didn't do it right?" She steadied herself against the decayed remnants of a column. "Okay, Mireille. Let's do this."

She focused.

"Wake --"

A distant boom. A tremor shook her to the floor.

An earthquake?

A second boom, and quake. Followed by a third. And a fourth.

Um, aftershocks?

No, she thought. Footsteps.

She got to her feet. The tremors were getting closer. Old masonry dust crumbled from the remains of the patio. "It's okay, Mireille," she told herself. "It's a dream. You're in control. Nothing's real, so nothing can hurt you here, right? Nothing to fear but fear itself, eh?"

The far wall exploded. Chunks of ancient stone and wood pinwheeled through the air; she ducked to avoid concussion or, worse, decapitation. She coughed, waved away the dust, and tried to spot the nature of her new visitor.

It _was_ fear itself.

"Okay...Mireille," she said, slowly backing away. "Nothing to worry about. It's not real. It's just a penguin. A big one. A giant one that just smashed through a stone wall with its forehead. With glowing laser eyes. And a body made of what appears to be the squirming flesh of all its previous victims. And purple shoes." She gulped. "Right. Just a giant, undead, cyborg penguin from the innermost circle of Hell. Nothing to be scared of."

The great beast whipped a massive biomechanical chainsaw out from behind its back, revved it over its head, and roared.

"Holy #$%#!" said Mireille.

She leapt back. The huge saw ripped through the air and smashed into the floor just where she was previously standing, chewing and spitting stone. She screamed, and scrambled for safety. She tripped. The growling blade sliced through the space where her upper-torso just was a second ago, and crashed through several stone pillars. She yelped, and then yelped again, as the dread beast smashed the blade into the ground next to her; she just moved her legs in time. In desperation, she tossed Mr. Wuffles at the monster. While it incinerated her childhood friend with its techno-demon-electro-vision, she sprinted for the nearest exit.

A great, slimy, foul-smelling flipper met her going the opposite way, and slammed her against a wall. She bounced off it, and flopped to the floor, wracked with pain.

Adrenaline saved her. Ignoring the stars in her vision and the screaming pain from her ribs, she dived out of the way of a cleaving blow, landing hard on one heel. It snapped, twisting her ankle. "Never...wearing...heels...again!" she gasped.

The hell beast bellowed at her. Its breath was that of burning flesh. A set of flaming claws scored the stone before her. Desperately, still struggling with her leg, she tried to crawl away.

Everywhere she looked, she saw wall.

Cornered!

The monster growled. Its chainsaw thrummed and spat. It advanced, slowly, each step shaking the earth. White, putrescent slime dribbled from its spiny beak. Mireille whimpered. It raised its mighty weapon in both flippers, pulled the starter cord, and roared. She screamed, repeatedly. In an unreasoning panic, she turned and tried to claw her way up the slime-slick walls. Her fingers clawed uselessly.

Or maybe not, she realized.

There was something written on the wall. A message.

Seeing as she was going to die anyway, she read it.

It said:

"Remember who you are.

Sincerely,

Rational Thought"

And Mireille Bouquet, professional assassin, aged 20, turned on her heel, pulled her Walther P99 from where she knew it always was, and fired.

The shot ripped through the creature's left flipper. It howled, and then screamed in pain as the now-fumbled chainsaw fell and sliced right through one of its rotting limbs. White putrescence spurted from the wound. Its eyes blazed, and it roared in her direction. Suddenly, it flinched, as a second round punched through its shoulder. It staggered back as two more popped into its chest.

Eyes steel, all fear fallen away, Mireille advanced, firing again and again. "Die...you...god...damned...mutant...hell...beast!" she said, punctuating each word with a bullet. "Die, damn it! Die die die!"

The monster screamed in agony. Its flesh convulsed, oozing from innumerable wounds. It stumbled, and crashed against the patio walls. Its eyes crackled. It raised its one remaining flipper. Its claws flamed. It howled in rage, swept back its mighty hand --

She put her last bullet directly between its eyes.

A squeal of a stuck pig, cut off suddenly. The creature stumbled back. Its head collapsed, as if imploding. Its whole body thrashed and convulsed. And then, without warning, it exploded.

Wetly. And very, very messily.

Mireille picked herself off the ground for the umpteenth time. A thick, goopy, white mess covered the remains of the patio, a good chunk of the olive grove, and, regrettably, her. She tried to wipe her goo-covered face with a goo-covered hand, and then realized why one can't do that.

"You know," she said, to the world at large, "it's a damn good thing this is a dream, because this would make for one hell of a dry-cleaning bill." She laughed at her own joke, riding the crest of an adrenaline high. You know, she thought, surveying the carnage, I think I saw this in a movie once. I wonder...

She licked her finger, experimentally.

The goop did, in fact, taste a bit like marshmallow.

But mostly like exploded penguin guts.

"Okay," she said, after she'd finished vomiting. "Note to self: never do that again."

She waded out of the patio area into less slime drenched parts. "This," she noted, "is by far the most messed-up dream I have ever had the misfortune of having. Fortunately, since I know this is a dream..." She focused. "I...am...clean!"

And with a soft _ping_, she was.

She wandered down to the beach. It was, as expected, exactly as she remembered it. She sat down, and tried to gather her thoughts.

"So...this is a dream. A lucid one. And I can't seem to wake up. Why?"

A piece of paper fluttered by. She grabbed it, and unfolded it.

It was a note.

"Sorry, haven't the foggiest, signed Rational Thought," she read.

"Uh...thanks for the save, back there, I guess," she said to the air.

She noticed a second fold in the paper. She opened it. "No prob; lay off the highballs and we'll call it even," she read.

She smirked. "Okay," she said, to the paper, "since you're presumably the smart one in this head of mine, what do I do next?" She turned the sheet over.

"Well," read the note, "I would suggest that you huminumuminarghbarbleshlup --"

Mireille jumped as the note melted through her fingers, dribbled onto the sand, and burst into flames.

"Oh, dear, that can't be a good sign," she said.

"No. It isn't."

In a flash, Mireille willed herself a fresh clip, reloaded, whirled, and aimed at the voice.

She squinted.

She was aiming at the sun.

"What the...?"

"Fear not," said the sun. "I am a friend."

"Who...who are you?" She shaded her eyes.

"Now is not the time or place for you to learn my name," said the sun.

"Uh, could you turn down the aura of light a bit? It kinda stings."

"Oh my! I'm sorry! Right away!"

Mireille blinked. The figure was still bathed in light, but she could just make out a feminine silhouette. A dress. Wings. Hair that sprung forth like a flower. And a radiant smile. The radiant one was either very, very far away, or very, very small.

"Oooookay, Miss...Whatever You Are. Care to explain what you just said?"

"You are in great peril," said the figure.

"Uh, yeah, I kind of noticed that after the giant evil demon penguin from the Abyss tried to give me a haircut."

The figure shook her head. "That is only how your mind has interpreted it," she said. "You are dreaming. But while you dream, your real self lies empty. Dying."

Briefly, Mireille had a flash of herself sprawled on a familiar floor, covered in what must be blood.

"No..." she said. "I...I've got to wake up then. Now."

"Alas, you cannot."

"Then you do it! Help me, please!"

The figure shook her head, sadly. "This is your dream, Mireille Bouquet. I cannot interfere in it."

"But someone already is! When I tried to wake up, earlier...I could feel it! I was almost there! But then there was this voice, laughing, and this hand, with claws..."

"Yes. He is the Master of Dreams."

"The 'Author' of my misfortunes?"

The figure looked thoughtful. "My, I never thought of it like that! Yes, that would work, too."

"Who is he?" She clenched her teeth. "_Where_ is he? What does he want with me?"

"He wants nothing from you, save your pain and fear. As for where...that is hidden from me. You must find him yourself."

"And after I find him, what then?"

"You must challenge him. He will turn your deepest, darkest fears against you, but, if you persevere, you may yet escape from his grasp and return to the world of waking."

"My darkest fears? But, I just did that, didn't I?"

The figure nodded.

"Then where is the bastard?"

"Your task is not yet done," said the figure. "Your soul is tied to another, and she is still in grave danger."

Mireille gasped. "Kirika...where is she!?"

"She is in that place where she fears most, that place where her world came crashing down, and her heart split in twain. You two share a bond, a special bond, one of life, love, and death. Follow it, and you will find her."

"Follow it..." She chewed her lip, thoughtfully. "I...think I understand. Thank you."

"Good luck," said the figure, floating off. "If you face, and defeat...Him...we may yet meet again."

"Wait!" Mireille squinted at her. "Why are you helping me? Why are you doing all this?"

The figure looked embarrassed, if that's possible for a presumably-divine silhouette. "It is for a selfish purpose," she said. "The Master...is a friend. He has fallen to his own dark dreams; you have merely been caught up in events. But he, too, may yet be saved, if you succeed."

Mireille nodded. "All right. So...save my partner, beat the evil mastermind, wake up." She smirked. "Sounds like a plan."

"Farewell," said the figure. She vanished into a point of light.

Mireille exhaled. Dreamscapes, entangled souls, lives in the balance...heavy, she thought. She gripped her Walther.

Kirika...hold on. I'm on my way.

She steadied her breathing, and closed her eyes. In her mind, she recalled _that_ place, envisioned every crack, every stone, every leaf, the heat of the sun, the sparkling water, the green grass. She focused on it, on herself, and _willed_ herself into the mental picture.

She opened her eyes.

_the same self the only self_

_self willed the peril of a thousand fates_

_a line of infinite ends finite finishing_

_the one remains oblique and pure_


	8. She What Kicks

**Chapter 8: She What Kicks...**

She was there.

The open sky. A clear, square pool of crystal water. Stone pillars, ancient, crumbling arches, Greco-Roman architecture...all too real. Mireille silently cursed herself for having an overly vivid imagination.

No time for that, she reminded herself. Find her, and get out.

She climbed up a series of decaying steps and over a fallen limestone pillar. Before her was a large, open courtyard, vaguely reminiscent of the Parthenon in Greece. She looked for, and soon located, a particular spot on the far side of the area, otherwise unremarkable, save for the fact that a certain life-shattering incident had occurred on that very spot in recent memory.

Contrary to her expectations, there wasn't anything there.

She wandered over for a closer look. Broken tiles, bits of vine growing through, empty air...not much else. No recently spilled blood, no amazingly strong fork, and (this was the important bit) no young Japanese amnesic girl stabbing a purple-haired psychopath in the heart with it. She waved a foot through a five cubic meter volume of air located above the spot, half-expecting to hit something. "Huh," she said, when she didn't.

Strange, she thought. I'm positive this is where she'd be.

"Kirika?"

Echoes answered her.

"Kirika!" she shouted, walking the perimeter of the yard. "Kirika, where are you? Kir -- oh."

A cold wind had directed her attention to the far corner of the yard, where stood a small, black-haired figure wearing what may have been considered high-fashion back in the Late Toga Period.

Mireille sighed, relieved. "Found you."

Her heels clicked over the ancient stones. "Kirika?" She slowed her pace as she drew near. "It's me, Mireille." She stopped, only a few steps away. "Are you all right?"

She waited for an answer that did not come.

"Listen, Kirika. I know you're probably confused right now, and sad, and maybe a little bit frightened. I know I am," she added, with a wary glance at her surroundings. "Nothing seems to make sense, I'm guessing. You, you've probably just experienced some of the most hellish moments in your life, ones you hoped you'd never live through again. The fear, the sadness, the pain you feel right now...it's not real. Well, no, it _was_, but it isn't, right now. It's a memory, Kirika, a dream. This is a dream. I don't understand it myself, but we're both trapped in it, and we're going to have to work together to get out of it in one piece."

The figure had not moved throughout her entire monologue.

Mireille gulped, nervously. "Kirika," she said, "I know how you feel right now. You feel like your whole world has sort of turned upside down. You don't know who, or what, to believe anymore. But I need you to trust me. Because if you don't, then, then...we might never wake up again."

The figure remained silent.

"Kirika? Say something, please? Answer me, damn it!"

"I trust you," she said.

Mireille exhaled. "Good. Great. Okay then. Now all we have to do is -- "

"_I_ trust you," repeated the figure.

She blinked. "Um, yes, we've established this, I think?"

The figure turned, swiftly. She gasped and stumbled back.

The young girl glared at her, eyes cold, distant, and merciless. "_I_ trust you, Mireille Bouquet," she said. "But..."

Out of the corner of her eye, Mireille spotted movement.

She drew her weapon from thin air and aimed to her left.

Then her right.

Then further right.

Disbelief dragged her weapon downwards, as her mind tried to comprehend what it was seeing.

"What...the...?"

Two, three, ten, fifty duplicates of the figure before her, each ostensibly the same, yet subtly different, stepped out from behind each pillar in the courtyard. "But..." said the original, as she and the others advanced on the bewildered Corsican, "the problem with being me is..." She smiled, wickedly. "...There's so many of me."

Mireille tried to keep far too many targets in her line of sight. The figures surrounded her on all sides; more were advancing over the hills surrounding the courtyard. All were closing in, slowly. "W-who..._what_ are you?!" she gasped.

"I am Kirika's dark dreams," said the original.

"I am her cold sweat," said another.

"I am her lost hope," said a third.

"Her secret fears."

"Her hidden wish."

"I'm the old man."

"I'm the old lady."

"I'm soup."

Mireille dragged her horrified eyes down and to the right to look at a smaller-than-average Kirika holding what appeared to be a bowl of miso soup.

"Um," she said.

The child smiled, and dashed the bowl in Mireille's face.

"Aaagh! The miso! It burns! Ooof!" A fist came out of nowhere and clocked her chin. She spun to face it. Three more met the pit of her stomach, as two others grabbed her gun arm and twisted. Her gun clattered to the ground, where countless pairs of sandaled feet kicked it away.

The mob rushed in. Mireille dodged a fist from her right, deflected a chop from her left, and stopped a bull-rush with a kick. An elbow cracked against the base of her skull; a knee met her as she toppled forward. And then she fighting blind, blocking, dodging, twisting, and turning in desperation. But the fists were everywhere. It was a hailstorm of blows, pummelling her from head to toe. Her breath came in strangled gasps. Her vision spun, a haze of limbs, faces, and bright flashes. Bones cracked. Something swept her legs out from under her, and she was on the ground. Fifty-seven pairs of sandaled feet began kicking and stomping her mercilessly.

As her body curled up in a desperate attempt to stave off the barrage, the conscience known as Mireille Bouquet struggled to make itself heard over the percussive symphony of pain. "Not...real!" she gasped. "Dream! In...control -- argh!" A foot had caught her hard in the face. Need to think, she thought. Distract them!

Through the blasting pain, Mireille recalled up the one thing she prayed would get her out of this situation, focused on it, envisioned it, and, with one thrust of an arm, summoned it.

Off on the far end of the courtyard, there was a flash.

An aluminium trash can fell from three meters in the air and landed with a crash. Something small, white, and stupidly cute rolled out of it.

Several hundred pairs of ears perked at the noise. Hundreds of heads turned.

_Mew_, went the kitten.

Five-hundred and seventy-two cat-aficionados said, "Kitty!" developed really, really stupid grins, and scampered off after the fleeing feline, severely trampling Mireille.

The dust settled over a beaten, bruised, bleeding sack of meat.

After a few minutes, it moved.

"Not...real..." gasped Mireille, as she tried to climb into a more vertical position. She coughed, spitting blood. "Not real," she reminded herself, trying to ignore the white-hot twanging fire flowing through her pain receptors. "It's a dream. There is...no pain! Your legs...aren't really...broken. Those aren't...actual...compound...fractures...in your...rib...cage. Those aren't...your back molars...on the ground before you..."

She picked them up, just in case.

After a good three minutes of laboured breathing (and bleeding) and meditative refocusing, she managed to convince herself of all that. She searched about for her gun, remembered something, and held out her palm, face-up, instead, catching it as it fell out of the sky. She wiped a last drop of blood from her mouth.

A thought struck her.

"Kirika!"

Empty echoes.

"Kirika! I know you're here! The _real_ you!" She looked about the yard. "You can't stay here, Kirika! If you do, we'll both _die!_ The real death, understand! Please! Show yourself!"

A cold wind swept past her. The clouds rolled and flickered overhead, as the sun soared from high noon to just over the horizon.

The wind died away. She heard it then, that sound which had always been there, but drowned out by everything else.

Soft sobs.

She sought their source; this time, she found it. She knelt. Of course, she thought. Right next to me, all this time. "Kirika?" she said, softly.

There was no shape there, no form; only a mirage, a haze of an outline of a body, knees hugged close to the chest, and the faintest suggestion of a face, with spectral tears falling to earth.

She reached for her, and was surprised when her hand passed right through thin air. No, she thought, upon reflection. Not just air. She tried again. The faintest warmth, the suggestion of hair, tears...

"Kirika? It's me, Mireille. Do you...remember me?"

The mirage nodded, once.

"Are you...okay?"

Her lips moved, but there was no noise. But Mireille knew better. She focused, and heard a whisper on the wind. "Who...am I?"

"Kirika?"

"So many voices, so many thoughts." The mirage trembled. "So many lies and illusions. So many secrets, things left unsaid. So much sadness, so much grief. So many...painful memories..."

Mireille looked off to her side. If she squinted, she could see three familiar figures, one shocked by recent events, the other wracked with grief, cradling the third in her arms.

"A thousand faces, here, inside of me..." Two transparent eyes, shining with grief, turned to face her, aglow in the setting sun. "Which is...the real...me?"

"Kirika..." Mireille tried to comfort her, only to have her hands meet air once more. She struggled to control the tide of grief and sympathy rising within her, and then realized this was the wrong idea.

She closed her eyes, released it, and dove right in, following its eddies and currents to their source. She cast about her memories and emotions, searching blindly, as the weight of sorrow threatened to crush the life from her. And just as she felt on the verge of drowning, she found it.

A thread. A lifeline. A connection.

She grabbed hold, tightly. Instinctively, she moved to embrace her partner, her almost-sister, her friend.

She felt someone gasp.

"Kirika," she whispered, still with her eyes closed, "you, me, everyone...we're all like that. All of us have so many sides to ourselves; some we never see, others we wish would never see the light of day. There is sadness, grief, regret, despair, rage, anger, and a million others. But our true face, the one we see in ourselves...it isn't any one of these. Nor is it all of them put together. It's something more. Kirika, there is a _you_ somewhere in among all those thoughts and feelings in your head. I know sometimes it gets overwhelming; you feel lost, alone, and afraid. When that happens, you...I...we...forget something, something important, something wonderful." She drew the invisible form close, felt its hair against her cheek.

"We're _never_ alone, Kirika. There are links, bonds, threads connecting us all. There are people whom we know, whom we love, and want to be with, whom we can share our thoughts, our feelings, and our memories with. They see sides of we never knew existed, help us make sense of how we think and feel, of who we really are."

She heard someone sniffle, felt the warm breath of a sob on her neck.

"Kirika, I know you aren't sure of your identity, of your true self. It's the same with me. But I do know this." She grasped the form's shoulders in either hand. "I know that you are my closest, dearest friend, and that I have, and always will, trust you with my life. And we _will_ find what we both seek. _Together_."

She opened her eyes.

"Mireille?"

Gently, she brushed the tears from Kirika's eyes, then her own. "Welcome back."

They hugged each other, tightly.

Kirika sniffed. "So...this...really is...a dream?"

Mireille nodded. "Not only that, but someone's messing with it. So we're going to bring him down."

Kirika nodded, as if this was all expected. "So, what happens now, then?"

Her partner considered this. "Well, if your experience is anything like mine, you've just finished the mental endurance part of this dream. So, right about now, you'll have to face a seemingly nonsensical material manifestation of your deepest, darkest fears and overcome it in a challenging physical contest."

Kirika nodded.

"Although, frankly," continued Mireille, "I've absolutely no idea what Freud would say about all this. I mean, a penguin? Maybe I should see a psychologist, or something? Or cut back on those midnight movies?"

Kirika nodded, her eyes like those of a frightened deer.

Mireille noticed. "Kirika?"

"Mm," she squeaked.

"You...wouldn't happen to be looking at a seemingly nonsensical material embodiment of your deepest, darkest fears right now, would you?"

She nodded.

"Oh. It's right behind me, isn't it?"

"(Whimper)"

Mireille nodded.

Whirled.

Aimed.

Stopped.

"It's...it's...a...club...sandwich?"

Indeed it was. With thick slices of turkey, fresh lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and three strips of bacon, on two slabs of rye bread.

Mireille completed her tactical assessment. "Uh..."

Kirika was inching away, lost in an unreasonable panic.

"Kirika, calm down," said her partner. "It's just a sandwich! Okay, sure, it's a bit _bigger_ than normal, but that could just be an overenthusiastic person at the delicatessen. Oversized loaf of bread, maybe. Although the bread looks a bit stale, when I look at it this close. And I'm not sure about this little olive stuck in the top -- MY LEG! SWEET MOTHER OF GOD, IT'S GOT MY LEG! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! AAAAGH!"

Kirika screamed.

Feeling the sharp shards of bacon and clammy leafy-greens cutting through her boot, Mireille desperately tried to kick and pull the possessed sandwich off her foot. She succeeded, sending it flying.

It bounced, rolled, and snarled like a wounded wolverine, spraying mayonnaise everywhere, then charged with a speed that gave the words "fast-food" a whole new dimension of terror. Mireille scrambled backwards, firing. Some shots pinged uselessly off the ancient stones; others punched right through it, hardly slowing it down. It leapt. Mireille raised her arms to defend herself, and caught it in mid-air, its momentum bearing her to the ground. Again and again it lunged at her, snapping with teeth of meat and gums of wheat. It took all her strength to hold it back, and she could feel her arms giving way.

Suddenly, it churned, and spat a cold disk of tomato. It hit Mireille right between the eyes, distracting her. It growled, twisted free from her hands, leapt, and power-dived right at her face.

"Kirika!" she screamed. "Help!"

There was a rush of air. A fast-moving shape intercepted the enraged entrée in mid-air. It snarled. She heard Kirika scream. She closed her eyes, tight.

More snarls. Several dull thuds. A great, juicy crunch. An inhuman scream of pain, that gargled away into nothingness. A strangled _gulp_.

Mireille risked a look.

Kirika, breathing hard, plucked a piece of lettuce from her hair, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and burped. Politely.

"Kirika?"

The girl fell to her knees. "Mireille?"

She was at her side immediately. "Kirika?"

"I don't feel so good," she said, queasily.

"Well," said her friend, "I'm not surprised by that." A manic humour gripped her. "The mayonnaise looked a bit off in that thing, I think."

"No," said Kirika, touching her forehead. "I mean...I think I'm...losing...my...mind..."

Her manic grin vanished instantly. "Hold on, Kirika. You're safe now, okay? Just stay calm, and everything will be all right."  
  
"Will it? How can everything be 'all right'? I just ate a sandwich to death." Panic rose in her features. "How can we survive a place where even the lunch menu wants to kill us?"

"We'll survive it," said Mireille, "because we're together. We're two maidens bound together by love and fate. And there is no force in the universe that can stand against us."

Kirika seemed to settle down a little.

"Besides," added her partner, "we've taken out legions of trained assassins together. What's one sandwich compared to that?"

She smiled, nervously.

A voice laughed in mockery. Its laughter echoed off the ancient pillars, hid in every shadow cast by the setting sun.

"Who's that?" she asked.

Mireille raised her weapon. "A real bastard, that's who." She stood, and glared at the shadows. "You think you can terrorize us that easily? With a few hallucinations? We're Noir, you idiot! We. ARE. Fear! We've had enough of your games, whoever you are! Come out and face us. Now!"

The voice laughed, long and hard. A voice of blood-drenched steel rasped from the air itself. "_As...you...WISH!_"

A frigid gale whipped through the courtyard, then left. The sun plunged into the distant ocean, and moonlight flooded the land.

Kirika apparently took this all in stride. "Was that always there?" she asked, pointing.

Mireille looked at the ordinary wooden doorway hovering in mid aid about three paces away from her. "Does it matter?" she replied.

Kirika shook her head. "Do you have another gun?"

"This is a dream, remember? Oh, wait; maybe you don't know how these dreams work, yet. You just sort of imagine what you want and -- yeah, like that."

Kirika had plucked her Beretta plus two spare clips from the white parka she was now (and, metaphysically, was always) wearing.

Mireille examined the door, warily. "Ready for this?" she asked, both to her partner and herself.

She nodded.

In unison, they kicked open the door and swept through it.

_dream the dream beyond life and self_

_find the new way_


	9. Ex Muris

**Chapter 9: Ex Muris **

"Kirika?"

"Yes?"

"Can you see anything?"

"Um...yes?"

"Other than yourself and me, I mean."  
  
"Oh. Well...no."

"I'm just asking, you see. Seeing as we stepped through a door, and it isn't there anymore, and all."

"Huh. Um, Mireille?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we...floating?"

"Are you normally upside-down?"

"...No?"

"It's probably psychological; we see a black, empty void, so we think, 'Space,' and 'zero-gravity,' so we float."

"But...is there any air in -- "

Mireille grabbed her partner by the parka. "_Don't...say that!_ You don't want to give our subconscious-selves any ideas! Just imagine that there's plenty of air, and that there is, in fact, a floor for us to stand on."

Kirika nodded, flipped, and landed next to Mireille, right-side up. "So, the one behind this is in here somewhere, then?" Her partner nodded. She stared into the infinite abyss, wondering if anything would stare back. "Um...where, exactly?"

"No idea," said her partner. "Actually, I'm a bit disappointed. I'd expected one of those big Gothic cathedrals, maybe a bit of lightning, maybe a pipe-organ symphony..."

Lighting flared. Someone played a few bars on a really big pipe-organ.

Mireille rolled her eyes. "Well, _that_ was original."

"Mireille!" Kirika aimed at something in the distance; her partner followed suit soon after.

"Some...sort of grey mist," said Mireille. "Smoke? Gas, maybe?"

"No. I can see shapes. Arms. Hands. Faces."

"Getting closer now," said Mireille, monitoring its advance. "From all sides." Wordlessly, she and her partner moved back-to-back.

The spectral fog rolled in, bearing whispers. And there were arms, hands, and faces there, by the hundreds, all dead, all rotting...and all too familiar.

"Mireille?" Her voice was trembling. "I...I see..."

"Yeah," she replied, eyes flicking from face to face, recognizing every one. "I know."

They numbered in the hundreds, at least. Most Mireille and Kirika had glimpsed only briefly, often at the other end of a weapon. Almost all were men, nameless to them in both life and death. Many wore suits, all stained with mud and blood. Some wore masks, some whole, some split in twain, caked with blackness. Only a handful of (recognizably) female forms were in amongst the fog of spirits.

More familiar faces pushed their way to the front. There was Dux, his eyes rotting, arms wracked and twisted; D'Estaing, grown grotesquely fat and corpulent with his ill-gotten legal gains; the Saints of Sicily, bullet-riddled, with their brutal Princess, hair afloat with an eldritch glow, eyes fearless, one powerful arm poised with an executioner's blade; and, barely visible, a pair of ghastly eyes, locked in a permanent, cruel stare, accompanied by ten razor-sharp daggers on the ends of barely-there fingers.

But it was not these figures, figures they had met and dispatched in hatred, which troubled them, though they reached and clawed and slashed at them with limbs chill and intangible. These blood-crazed spirits stabbed at their hearts, but did not pierce them, did not impale them with the freezing shards of terror, grief, and remorse.

Those grim bolts were cast by other ghosts; ones seemingly untouched by the ravages of the grave. Less than a heartbeat away they stood, silent, motionless, pitiless, and whole. They were the spirits of every man, woman and child who had given Mireille and Kirika their unconditional love and friendship, and had received, in exchange, utter ruin. They surrounded them on all sides, their eyes piercing, but without malice: an old man, with a white kitten; a young girl, holding a fallen orange; a Legionnaire, painting; an Uncle, bearing flowers.

Two of them stepped forth. Phantom limbs encircled and passed through them. Chill lips pressed against their mouths. They gasped.

"Chloe...?"

"Mama? Papa?" Her limbs trembled. Tears started in her eyes. They embraced her. An arctic chill claimed her blood, crystallized her heart, and stopped her breath. Darkness rolled in from the edge of Mireille's vision.

Survival instincts kicked in. Mireille summoned forth her anger. Rage gave her the strength to shake off the chill, scatter the embrace from beyond the grave. "STAY _**BACK**!_" she screamed. She fired wildly. The bullets whipped uselessly through the mob. The mob defied her words, circled even closer, around her, over her. She could feel their nails, chilled to absolute zero, score marks across her skin. The scent of death filled her nostrils. Words, filled with malice, or, worse, love, whispered in her ear. "Not real," she moaned, clutching her head. "Not real!" She curled up to defend against the assault from without, but that left her wide open to the ocean of black despair welling up in her heart. Suddenly, it burst its dams, rushed into her blood, and flooded her mind.

"Not real," she whimpered, as the darkness claimed her.

"No."

The voice was a life-line. She grabbed it in both hands.

"No," it repeated.

She pulled herself up. Suddenly, she realized something was sticking into her back.

Kirika.

The voice was hers.

No, she realized, upon reflection. _Theirs_.

The two rose to their feet, back to back, supporting each other. Though the claws of the dead scythed through their limbs, they no longer felt them.

"This..._is_...real," whispered Kirika.

"Yes," her partner whispered back. "These people..."

"...These sins...we see them, every night in our dreams, every time we blink, staring at us from the darkness."

"But we do not fear them," said Mireille, her voice taking on an edge.

"We accept them," said Kirika, strength returning to her words. "We accept...you. All of you." She faced the spectral girl with the billowing cloak in front of her, looked her straight in the eye. "We accept your anger, your grief, your regret, for they are our own. And we will bear them, until the end of our days."

"And that end is not yet come," said Mireille. "We know the face of death, and none of you bear it."

The horde stepped back, circling warily.

"We will not fight you," said Kirika.

"But we will avenge you," added Mireille. "We will make the one who has disturbed your rest _pay._"

Kirika lowered her weapon; she felt Mireille do the same behind her.

The horde plunged forward and _into_ them. Phantoms whirled, howled, and screamed as the shadow host funnelled into their souls. A thousand daggers of ice and flame ravaged their hearts and minds, but the two women stood firm. And then, just as they were about to pass through pain to the calm, cool lands of unconsciousness beyond --

It stopped.

The void was empty, once more.

They collapsed, dead.

And yet, somehow, still breathing.

"Mireille?"

"Kirika?"

"Are we dead?"

"Does it matter?"

"...No?"

"Good."

Slowly, limbs heavy with a level of fatigue neither thought possible (and which, upon reflection, wasn't), they stood, supporting each other.

"We still have to finish this," said Kirika. Mireille nodded. "Come out!" she said to the void.

"Yeah," taunted Mireille, "is that your best!? Your shadow-tricks are _nothing!_ Face us! Show yourself!"

The hideous cackle was like ice water on their spines. They snapped to attention.

"Where are you?" demanded Kirika.

"I am here."

They pivoted, and aimed. Nothing.

"I am here," came the voice, from their left.

Again. Void.

"I am here," it said again, to their right. Then above them. Below. Between them. Soon, it was everywhere, growing more shrill and loud with each statement.

The two did not waver. They raised their weapons, closed their eyes, and focused, listening not with their ears, but with their souls, which hear all, and cannot be deceived. Until...

"_I...AM...HERE!_"

They swerved and fired, in unison.

Bullets screamed through vacuum towards a distant door, from which was cast an immense shadow.

A leather hand with claws of steel was raised, and flexed.

"Look out!" said Noir, as they saw the bullets reverse direction. They dived aside.

Lead met flesh, twice.

Mireille rolled and grunted in pain. "The arm," she growled, cradling it, "why is it always the damned arm?!" Kirika croaked and dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach. Mireille was at her side immediately.

"Kirika!"

"Fear is the mind-killer," she gasped, "the little death..."

"It's not real!" said Mireille, herself wincing. "Fight it!"

"I...know," she gasped. She coughed up blood.

"Kirika!" cried her partner, as she collapsed.

The huge shadow shook with laughter.

Mireille snarled. "Coward! Come and finish the job, if you think you can!"

Mireille covered the figure, keeping her body between it and her friend. It advanced, feet clicking on some surface intangible.

This took some time.

Then, through some trick of perspective, the figure was there, before her.

It was a man, in shape, at least. One of his hands was encased in a leather glove. The light from the door glinted off its hungry blades. A shirt of crimson and black stripes enclosed his arms and chest. A leather fedora covered his face.

"_You..._" The voice was of slit throats and cold steel. "You...dare...to call...ME...COWARD?" That hideous laugh returned. "You should not be so free with your words, Mireille Bouquet."

A thrill of terror ran through her.

"You. It is you who will play the coward, the fool, today, not I. You, who will run, you, who will hide, you...who...will..._scream_."

"We...we faced your illusions," she stammered. "We've survived the worst you could throw at us!" The paralysis of fear started to claim her thoughts.

Except for one corner of her mind, which was trying to tell her something...

Suddenly, the figure lashed out. Mireille yelped, as steel claws cut her wrist. The gun fell to the floor. A fist caught her on the chin, sent her flying. Daggers stabbed into her right thigh. She screamed.

The figure howled with laughter.

Mireille struggled to get up. Pain like knives stabbed her down. She tried, desperately, to block it out, to no avail. "Not real, not real, not real..."

"What is real?" cackled the figure, advancing. "What is real is what's in your mind. The deeper you go into it, the more real things get. And dreams, dreams come from the very deepest recesses of consciousness. They are real, too terribly real for us; we fight them off for as long as we can, but they lure us in with visions of better times, drag us down into the blackness with the weight of our own, exhausted selves. Have you ever woken up from a dream screaming?"

Mireille nodded, looking over his shoulder. Keep this guy busy... "Yeah, so?"

"That was not... _fear_...you felt, not terror that provoked that cry. It was...joy. Relief, happiness, brought out by the ecstasy you feel when you realize that you have once again escaped the trap of your own mind, that endless tunnel to the dark beyond! But now, here, there is no escape. For this is _my_ world, _my_ rules. Here, _I_ rule. Here, _I. AM. POWER!_ And now, you...and your little friend...will perish at **my hands!**"

"Why?" she asked, shaking. "Why us? Why do this to us?" In the distance, Kirika coughed, curled in pain upon whatever counted as ground here. She kept it up. "Why, why toy with our memories, why drive us mad? Why?"

"Why?" He laughed low and long. "_Why?_ I asked...them...that, every day. Every waking moment, I did. And did _they_ answer? HA! No, no they did not. They never did. Instead, it was more, more of their games, more of their _tricks_, every day, every hour, every minute, _without end!_"

"So," said Mireille, in an attempt at bravado, "they humiliated you. You, the 'Master of Dreams.'" She scoffed. "Pathetic."

She regretted her words immediately. A storm of claws slashed her face. A great hand of force slammed her against an invisible wall. Steel claws crushed her throat and chest, choking her. Suddenly, the figure was in her face, his hot, foetid breath upon her. Something in the back of her mind tried desperately to get her attention, but was shouted down by her rampant panic.

"Yessss," hissed the man, his nose twitching. "Yes, I was that. I was small. I was weak, and they were strong. They laughed at me, teased me, and toyed with my life. They tried to drive me _mad_." He giggled, hysterically. "They succeeded all too well. That was their last mistake!"

"W...what...?" She felt blood draining out of her from countless wounds, sensed parts of her body and mind shutting down, one by one. But, in the distance, she also saw her partner crawling towards her. She struggled to stay alive.

"They did it for fun," spat the man. "They did it because they though me weak. But they did not realize that the mind is like an _atom_: break it, and you unleash terrible power!" He stepped back several meters, his grip still somehow squeezing the life from her.

Somehow, that niggling entity called Rational Thought, with its last ounce of strength, roused Mireille to what her eyes were seeing. "You...you're a rat. Tiny."

The rat-thing cackled. "Yessss. And you will be my first victim. I shall take your mind, your soul for mine own. Then hers. Then...theirs. Oh, how they will _suffer_. And then, nothing will stop me! All shall fall to my will! All shall submit to my rule! None shall escape my dream!"

The shock of the realization gave her strength in her dying moments. "You're a rat," she repeated. "I, I could tear you in half with a shot. Heck, one stomp, and you'd be a pancake!"

Steel bit into her shoulder. She cried out, but there was no breath left in her lungs.

"_WRONG._" The man, the rat, the Master, hovered before her, clawed hand trembling with rage. "Size, stature, strength...you think those mean anything here? Here, the mind is all! Here, the imagination, the _will_, is supreme. And I am the master of will. I am the Master of Dreams! _I. AM. **IWATA MITSUO!**_"

And the last thing Mireille Bouquet saw before everything went black was a great leather hand with steel claws screaming towards her heart.

There was a final, deadly _thud_.

_When the time comes, whose life will flash before yours?_


	10. Electric Sheep

**Chapter 10: Electric Sheep**

Mireille fell to the floor, limp, coughing and wheezing. Air, she thought. Air good. Air so very, very good...

Her head stopped spinning, eventually. Stars and spots whirled across her sight. She blinked them away, and continued to do so for several seconds until she realized that the reason she couldn't see anything was that there was nothing, in fact, to see.

There was a warm hand on her shoulder.

She coughed, woozy from blood-loss, imaginary though it was. "K...Kirika?"

They embraced.

"Kirika," she whispered. "Took you long enough," she added, in an attempt at humour (her tears said otherwise).

"Yeah," she replied, doing likewise.

Mireille looked over her partner's shoulder.

The Master of Dreams lay dead upon the floor. There was surprisingly little blood. He was also surprisingly flat, having a great giant print upon his spine the exact shape and dimension of a running shoe that Mireille knew, instinctively, to be pink.

"You...stepped on him?"

Kirika nodded, still hugging her.

"But, I thought he said..."

She released her. "You never know until you try," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh."

Mireille shuffled over to his corpse. She noticed her wounds were healing already. I could get used to this, she noted, upon that observation.

The Master was indeed a rat, clad in a loose-fitting red-and-black shirt and a tiny hat, one hand wearing a glove with what looked like bits of tin can stuck onto the fingertips. He had a rather ridiculous bug-eyed look, with his tongue sticking out of his mouth at a strange angle.

"So much hatred in such a small creature," said Mireille.

"What a horrible life he must have lead," said Kirika.

"Yeah." Mireille gave the corpse an experimental prod with her foot. Suddenly, she felt giddy. "You know," she said, a smirk tugging at her lips, "he actually looks pretty ridiculous."

"Yes," said her partner, examining him carefully. "What with the eyes, and the tongue like that..."

"Squashed flat as a pancake."

"Yeah," she agreed, smiling faintly.

"The 'Master of Dreams'!" laughed Mireille.

"Heh. Yeah, that is kind of funny, I guess."

Mireille howled with laughter.

"Mireille?" said her partner, concerned.

The blonde one doubled over, shaking hysterically.

Kirika grabbed her. "Mireille?" She shook her. "Mireille! Please! Stop!"

Her laughter turned to body-shaking sobs, and she collapsed against her.

She held her close, afraid to let go. "Mireille? What's wrong?"

"I'm going insane," she whimpered.

"Mireille! Please, be strong! You'll get through this. We both will! 'Maidens bound together by love and fate,' remember?"

"How can you be so calm at a time like this?" she moaned.

"Um, actually, I think I'm in an advance state of shock, if it makes you feel better?"

She nodded. It did.

Mireille sniffed, and blew her nose on a tissue she plucked from nothingness (I'm getting too good at this, she noted). She surveyed the darkness around her. "I don't get it," she said. "We beat him, right? Why are we still here? Why haven't we awakened? Where is she?"

"Mireille!"

"Hm?" She turned, and gasped.

Kirika had transformed into a shivering, terrified thing. "Mireille? There's something...on...my..._head._"

And there was, as Mireille saw.

A very small woman with hair that sprung forth like a flower was perched on her partner's head. She wore small shoes, a (small) yellow dress, three (small) blue, diamond-shaped facial markings, and an exceptionally cute (and small) smile. She waved.

It was a small wave.

Mireille waved back, stunned.

"Mireille?" The voice was barely a squeak.

"It's okay, Kirika," said her partner, unable to look away from the little lady. "I think she's on our side."

"You have both done very well," said the woman, with a voice like sunlight. "You have saved my friend, and yourselves. Oh, but you have suffered much. But fear not; your long ordeal is over, and soon, you shall --"

Mireille finally realized that the rising noise on the edge of her awareness was not, in fact, a mosquito, as she'd expected, but her partner, Kirika.

"ggggggggg_ggggggggetitoff getitoff get it off GET IT OFF!_" She smacked desperately at her head before collapsing in a fit of hysterics. Mireille caught her, and held her sobbing form.

The presumably divine tiny woman had long since levitated off her head and alighted by the flattened Master of Dreams (AKA Iwata Mitsuo). "My! He's dead, isn't he!" She clapped her hands. Several pixilated cherubim descended from above and sprinkled dust on the corpse, tinkling like bells. "Wake up, Gan-Chan!"

"Ha HAH!" The Master of Dreams (AKA Iwata Mitsuo, AKA Gan-Chan) leapt to his feet, body healed and eyes ablaze with fury.

Mireille clutched Kirika protectively and brandished her Walther (which actually flew into her hand from several meters away) in his direction. "No! Stay back!"

"My loyal servant has revived me," cackled the rat. "And now, prepare yourselves! For now, you shall know TRUE PAIN!"

"Look!" said the woman, pointing. "Flying cheese!"

"Come to me, winged gorgonzola!" The Master of Dreams scampered joyously off into the blackness in pursuit of levitating dairy product.

The woman smiled.

Mireille dropped the gun, weaving a bit. She was distantly aware that the neural networks in her brain were fusing into something resembling a lump of coal. "Wha...how...guh?"

"Fear not," said the woman. "His rage is forgotten; he will trouble you no more."

"Forgotten?" sniffed a girl.

"Kirika?"

"But," said Kirika, "what is forgotten...can be remembered. Won't he return? Miss...?"

"Oh my, where are my manners?" She levitated before them, and curtseyed low. "I am the Goddess, Belldandy." She did a pirouette.

"A 'goddess'?" Mireille heard what she imagined must be Rational Thought bouncing off the walls of her skull.

"Miss Belldandy," continued Kirika. "That rat, that...Master. Will he come back?"

"Alas, yes," said Belldandy. "Every night. Each night, the madness takes him, and he invades another dream, and another soul must fight to escape." She looked away, sadly. "I, I do what I can, but sometimes..."

"There's no way to prevent this?" asked Mireille. "You're a 'goddess,' right? Can't you just, I dunno, magic some discipline into whomever keeps torturing the bastard?"

"I do try, but they can be so stubborn sometimes. But fear not!" she said, with that ever-present grin. "I'm positive they'll treat him better this time!"

"I'll never sleep again," whimpered Kirika.

"Can you at least get us out of here?" asked Mireille. "Please? We can't take much more of this!"

She nodded. "The time and place are right. The path to the World of Waking is open to you now. Just click your heels three times and say, 'Klaatu Verada Nikto,' and you shall return to your regularly scheduled lives, already in progress."

Mireille and Kirika, already way past the point where such dialogue would surprise them, climbed to their feet. "Thank you," they said.

The divine one inclined her head.

"And please," added Mireille, "do something about that rat!"

"I will."

They clicked their heels, thrice, said the words, and braced themselves.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

It was an unusually smooth transition.

Mireille opened an eye, experimentally. "Um...we're still --"

"-- Here," finished Kirika.

The goddess blinked. "My! That usually does the trick..."

"We're trapped here?" asked Kirika. "No!"

"Please!" begged her partner. "There has to be another way!"

"One moment, one moment!" she shushed. She thought, deeply. "Entangled souls...yes, that must be it..."

"Be what?"

"You two share a bond of life, love, and death. It is your greatest strength, but with great strength comes great burdens in life...and in dreams. The easy way, the...painless...way, will not work for you."

Mireille sighed. "Okay, lay it on us. What do we have to do? Slay the dragon? Rescue the princess? Cast it into the fire? What?"

She shook her head. "Your way back to life lies in that very bond. The bond of love, and..."

"Death," said Kirika, realizing what she meant.

Mireille's overloaded brain caught up with events. "We...have to _die?_"

The goddess was serious, almost grim. "Normally, if you die here, your soul would be lost forever. But, if you two use the bond between your souls..."

"We...have to _kill_ each other?" said Kirika, horrified.

"If you do so, and your love for each other is true, you shall escape this dark underworld."

They slumped on their haunches, stunned. Subconsciously, their weapons had found their way into their hands.

"Can...can we have some time to think about this?" asked Mireille, her voice hollow.

The goddess nodded. "You are safe here. Take as long as you need." A thought occurred to her. "And I know just how to pass the time!" She snapped her fingers.

A small table with five small chairs actualized with a resonant _ping_. Two women, with similar facial markings, were seated at it. One had black hair, the other white. Both were doing a remarkably good job of cosplaying a certain green-cloaked assassin. A full moon shone through a nearby window.

"Tea?" asked the goddess, raising a cup of it.

Mireille and Kirika shot each other, in unison.

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

"Aaaaaauuuhhmuhgawdh..."

And with that triumphant cry, Mireille Bouquet, splattered with alcohol and tomato juice, head aching and joints throbbing after being held in questionable positions for several hours, returned to the land of the living. She felt exhausted, heavy, in fact, almost as if someone was sitting on her chest.

She croaked, and rubbed her eyes. A life-sized poster of Orlando Bloom as Legolas™ slowly came into focus. Gods, she thought, why did I ever let her put that thing up there.

She gasped. "Kirika!"

"Mm?"

"Kirika?"

The young Asian blinked until her eyes were moving in sync again, and then lifted herself off Mireille's chest. "Mireille?"

"When did you get back? I didn't hear you come in?"

"Um, just now, I...think? I came in, and you were...Mireille! Are you okay?"

"What? Oh, yes, yes, I'm fine. Looks like I had a bit of a spill or something."

"Oh." Kirika noticed something. "Um...Mireille?"

"Yeah? Uh, why are you blushing all of a sudden?"

"Um...this position...did we...?"

Mireille suddenly realized exactly how Kirika was sprawled on top of her. "What? N-no, no! Of course not!" she said, defensively. "We're still fully-clothed, for one," she added, as an afterthought."

"But, um, is that always an issue? I mean, I read in this book..."

Mireille's internal librarian sputtered about before drawing up the right reference card, and passing it over, hesitantly. She rolled her eyes. "Kirika..."

"Mm?"

"When I said you should read a book on...._that_ subject, if you had any questions..."

"Uh huh?"

"I did not mean The Kama Sutra."

"But it had pictures and everything," she said, sheepishly.

She sighed. "Just...get off me already, please?"

She did, and helped her up. She wheeled the swivel chair back over to its usual spot by the computer, and took a look at the screen. "Mireille!" she scolded. "_Bejewelled_? You promised!"

"It was a moment of weakness!"

Kirika shook her head in disapproval.

"Well, this is a mop job, no question about that," said Mireille. "Man, my head hurts. And my neck is...killing...me..."

The room was suddenly quiet, as its two inhabitants had simultaneous flashbacks.

"Mireille?" whispered Kirika.

"Yeah?"

"Did you...did we just have..."

"A dream?" Confused, half-remembered images vomited up from her subconscious. She shivered. "Yeah..."

"There, there was...a small woman?" said Kirika, struggling to recall the images (even as she loathed to do so). "With pigtails? And...a dog? With a bazooka? And, and then there were..." She grew pale.

"It...it was just a dream, anyway," said Mireille. "Forget about it."

"No, wait." She thought hard, and came to a realization. "You...you were there. With me. You, you said something. To me. About us. It was important. But, I can't remember the words..."

Mireille, on the other hand, did. "Uh, neither do I," she lied.

"Oh." She looked depressed.

"But..." She came to her side. "It is said that dreams are a window into the subconscious. They can tell us a lot about who we are, how we think, what we really feel...about others."

Kirika nodded. "I guess the word's aren't important...since I remember the feelings behind them." She smiled, faintly.

Mireille cleared her throat, suddenly flustered. "So, uh, how was your trip? Ah, never mind, it's almost six o'clock; you can tell me over dinner."

"But I ate on the plane?"

"Something light, then? C'mon," she said, on her way to the kitchen, "I'll fix you a club sandwich."

Kirika went white as a sheet.

"Aaaaand by 'club sandwich,'" said Mireille, as she recalled certain curious details, "I mean 'omelette.'"

"I'll make the tea," she said.

They gathered in the kitchen, and set about their tasks. "Let's see," muttered Mireille, "I think I have some eggs, still." She opened the fridge.

There was a celebratory _honk_. A paper noisemaker bounced off her nose. Confetti followed.

She blinked. Behind her, a teacup shattered on the floor.

There was a large paper banner stretched across the interior of the fridge. It had "Congratulations!" written on it in big, fat letters. Pink ones. Beneath it were three very tiny women, dressed as a mariachi band. One, whose hair did spring forth like a flower, snapped her fingers and kicked up her dress. The trumpeter and guitarist played a snappy Mexican number as she danced with castanets in either hand on a container of sour cream. They reached the big, foot-stamping finish, and posed. "Olé!" they said.

She slammed the door shut. Several magnets fell off. She whipped it open.

Eggs, milk, cheese, pastrami, lettuce, three-day old dim-sum...

Carefully, taking care not to drop anything, she selected what she needed, set it on the counter, and eased the fridge door shut.

"Mireille?" Her partner was deathly pale.

"Yeah, Kirika?"

"Did we..."

"No," she said, firmly. "No we didn't."

"But I --"

"No."

"But if that was her, and she was there, doesn't that mean we could still be...?"

Mireille took a deep, cleansing breath. "I'm going to make dinner. We'll eat it, and you'll tell me all about your trip as we do so. Then, I'll get a mop, and clean the floor. Then I'll wipe _Bejewelled_ off the drive. Then I'm going to have a shower, and go to bed. To sleep. And I'll have nice, normal, perfectly ordinary dreams that will not involve any little women, any talking rats, and absolutely, positively no giant mutant undead cyborg chainsaw-wielding hell-penguins!"

Kirika considered this. "Giant undead...?"

"Don't ask," said Mireille.

"Don't tell," she replied.

_And all throughout the Dreamscape, dancing through the wreckage of shattered minds and broken dreams..._

_GAN-CHAN WAS LAUGHING_

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

**Noir: Contracts**

**Final Status Screen**

Difficulty: Last Trial

Play Time: 7:12:45

Saves: 0

Continues: 0

Special Items: Mr. Wuffles, Piece of Lettuce

Parodies/References: Men's Pocky, Stephen Hawking, Jimmy "Super Fly" Snuka, Kotono Mitsuishi, Monty Python, H.P. Lovecraft, Rudyard Kipling, Scenes from the Life of Madame and Monsieur Trousseau, the Chicken Soup series, the US Anti Drug advertisement campaign, Frank Herbert's Dune, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Mouse that Roared, Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostbusters, Lord of the Rings, Mystery Men, Big Trouble in Little China, Kill Bill, Men in Black, Matrix: Reloaded, Star Wars, Fight Club, Army of Darkness, The Phantom of the Opera, Star Trek: the Next Generation, Bob the Builder, Seinfeld, Azumanga Daoih!, Keropi, Excel Saga, Hamtaro, Gunsmith Cats, Read or Die, Adventures of the Mini Goddesses, You're Under Arrest!, Oh My Goddess!, Serial Experiments Lain, Marathon series, Bejewelled, Harry the Handsome Executive, Mozilla, Metal Gear: Solid, Fallout 2, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Perfect Dark, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Final Fantasy VI, Medal of Honour, Unreal Tournament, Hitman: Contracts.

Character: Mireille/Kirika

Shots Fired: 49/32

Kills: 21/6

Accuracy: 61%/13%

Favourite Weapon: Walther P99/HK G11

Awards: Multi-Kill, Most Deadly/Most Professional, AC -10 Award

Ranking: True Noir

Unlocked: Tasteful Dress Mode, X4 Firing Rate, "Making Of" Featurette

XXXXxxxxxxxxxxx.....

**The Making of Noir: Contracts**

So, you beat the game on "Last Trial" difficulty, eh? Congraturation! A Winner Is You! Enjoy your unlockable bonus!

For best results, open this chapter in a separate window and read it simultaneously with the actual story. Um, this may require the ability to move your eyes in two directions at once.

[I wasn't going to do this originally, but then the references and in-jokes got so Byzantine that I couldn't keep track myself.]

General Comments  


This train wreck of a crossover was essentially written at 3 AM over a number of days. Having hit a roadblock on _Scenes from the Life of Madame and Monsieur Trousseau_, I decided to let my mind wander a bit. And I thought about another fantastic story on this very website, Swordskill's _Liberi Fatali_, and said to myself, "Self, Noir is about two contract killers, yes? So where are all the stories about hypothetical contracts? I mean, there should be thousands of them, yes?"

At this point, I laughed manically, ran downstairs, and wrote the teaser text, with a scrawled side note listing some possible scenarios.

I think I'd gone 48 hours without any sleep at this point, if it matters.

Things went downhill from there.

Special thanks to:

- The Marathon Story website for accidentally inspiring this whole mess.

- Lack of sleep, for, well, lack of sleep.

Chapter 1

I think this was 3 AM at work again. That's definitely where Bejewelled and the V-8 tonic came from.

If it matters, I actually did have to dig up a copy of Bejewelled. And almost got addicted to it.

_"This'll show that punk 'L1n0fT3hW1r3d' who's the REAL Queen of the 'Net!'"_  
And hey, everyone plays Bejewelled, even, I presume, Lain. Although she'd probably cheat, what with the whole "rearranging the universe how she sees fit" thing.  
  
_Assassinations could go stuff themselves; _this_ was her new anti-drug._  
For those not in North America, the United States government has, for several years, run a series of ads in popular magazines exhorting young people to find their "anti-drug" and, y'know, not shoot up, so they don't hallucinate like this story. Oddly enough, I was not, in fact, under the influence of drugs at any point during its creation.  
  
The pigeon? Penguins? 3 AM. I think I was experiencing random muscle spasms at this point.

The swivel chair? Get a Macintosh and download _Harry the Handsome Executive_ from Ambrosia Software. Hilarious game.

And now, the _Marathon_ explanation. I figured that since this story deals with weird dreams, why not draw inspiration from the most well-written FPS game in the universe, _Marathon Infinity_? All the epigraphs come from bits of Thoth ramblings (except for Chapter 9, explained below). The titles are all reworks of _Marathon_ levels. Really, really bad reworks.

Ne Cede Malis = Latin for "Do not yield to misfortunes."  
Ne Cede Concussu = "Do not yield to concussions."

Move on to Chapter 2, and find yourself starting back at the beginning of Mireille's career.

Chapter 2

Fatum Iustum Stultorum = "The just fate of the foolish."  
Fatum Iustum Bibliophile = "The just fate of a bibliophile."

This chapter was most definitely inspired by Star Otaku's _Ripped from the Pages_.

_The woman crossed over to her side of the street, sighing romantically. A flowerpot plummeted from five stories, missed her head by inches, and shattered messily. She didn't notice._  
Sadly, for those of you unfamiliar with _Read or Die_, this isn't much of an exaggeration of Yomiko Readman. Including the strongly­implied _yuri_ action.  
  
"_Why are you wearing a dress?"_  
And yeah, why _is_ Claude in a dress, 3 AM?  
  
Chapter 3

Two for the Price of One = unchanged from Marathon, here referring to two concussions (and hangovers) from one drink.

Massive cranial trauma became a running gag really fast. Does it show?

This chapter is the result of another scrawled note: "Both K&M have combat reflexes, so what happens if they hear a bang or something?" And what if she's jet-lagged, too? I get the impression that Kirika's got so much raw skill sloshing around in her veins that it probably takes a great deal of effort on her part to do something _normally_.

_She trudged up the stairs to Mireille's apartment, waved to a pointless cameo known as Madame Trousseau, yawned, and fumbled for the keys._  
The "pointless cameo" popped in because I was writing that other story at the same time.

Women's Pocky: the emancipation of Japanese women continues.

Ah, slapstick. Gotta love it. Yet it's also one of the best action sequences I've ever written.

Chapter 4

Acme Station = the pinnacle of design  
Acme Education = the pinnacle of, well, y'know...and there's that company called Acme too...

L'École du Coups Puissant should be obvious, I hope.

This whole chapter just flowed. Especially since Osaka and Tomo already had such pronounced homicidal tendencies. It was also hilariously fun to write up this whole scene as a super complex, tense, _Metal Gear: Solid_ espionage sequence. It took some doing not to have Kirika hide under a cardboard box, I tell you.

"_A. Kasuga is one of the most wealthy and influential figures in the Osakan crime syndicate."_  
If you think this story goes too far, you obviously haven't read DB Sommer's _Azumanga Royale_. Yeesh...  
  
_"Ah! Hisakawa sama!"_  
Ring any bells? Looked at Hitoshi Doi's site recently?  
  
_An orange-haired, pig-tailed munchkin with eyes half the size of her head (a bit small for her age, in other words) smiled at her from the doorway._  
"When I was young and half my face was eyes" is an Ekplixi Original Joke, copywrite 2003.

Cthulu? Why not? F'tagn.

"_Enn joh Koh sai," said the voice, in terrible Japanese._  
Enjoh Kosai = ...uh...look it up.  
  
_"Sakaki O'Ren Ishii."_  
Y'know, it's remarkably convenient that Sakaki doesn't actually have a given last name, isn't it? (And you've all seen _Kill Bill_, yes?)  
  
_She flung the kitten over the wall. It yowled noisy. Suddenly, she felt depressed._  
3 AM. 'Nuff said.  
  
_A Great Pirenees, to be exact, although her Soldat indoctrination was curiously lax when it came to cynology._  
Cynology = the study of dogs.  
  
_"B-but don't we need some sort of complicated ritual recited by three Miskatonic professors to make her vulnerable first?"_  
I guess she read _The Dunwich Horror_, then.

Human Resources Weekly: this month, a special feature on reducing headcount!

_"Jimmy "Not the Super Fly" Snooker did it in '78."_  
Jimmy "Super Fly" Snuka is a wrestling legend, famous for kamakazie dives off the top of the steel cage.  
  
_"And there's the assassin's motto: nil mortifice sine lucre."_  
_Nil mortifice sine lucre_ ("No killing without payment," hence, "With payment, no killing") is the motto of the Assassin's Guild in Terry Pratchett's _Discworld_ series.  
  
_"Take Only Lives, Leave Only Corpses, Because Only You Can Prevent High-Speed Police Chases'?"_  
Ever heard of "Take only pictures, leave only footprints" and "Only you can prevent forest fires?" Didn't think so.  
  
_"Mentioned something about trepanning..."_  
And now you know the _real_ reason for Osaka's spacey behaviour.

Chapter 4

One Thousand Thousand Slimy Things = unchanged from Marathon, although here it would paraphrase Coleridge as, "And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did she."

It wasn't until this chapter that I really started getting into trouble. First off, I realized that every damn one of my contract hits took place in Japan. Second, I realized that, contrary to expectations, having Mireille and Kirika repeatedly assassinate Excel (the original premise behind this story) was actually quite boring; I mean, it happens all the time in the actual show. Eventually, I hit upon the idea of our favourite assassins getting some heavy artillery.

Oh, and I'd had another 3 AM moment here, wherein I established an actual plot arch. That's why Kirika is getting a _little_ bit suspicious of what's going on. I figure that with her mind already under so much pressure under ordinary circumstances she'd probably be the first to notice.

_"...alias Excel No-Not-Like-Access™, alias Bob the Builder."_  
Microsoft Access is Microsoft Excel on steroids. Bob the Builder? 3 AM. It's a kid's show that's pretty popular in the UK.  
  
_"Was once bitten by a moose in --'"_  
Everyone should recognize the moose bit from the opening credits of _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. If you don't, may you be savaged by a cute fluffy rabbit.  
  
_"Ah, right. 'If I knew that, then I could yadda yadda.'"_  
It's a parody, right? Of course I have to wreck the second-most dramatic line in the series with a _Seinfeld-_ism.  
  
_"Are you sure? I mean, you were mixing Mydol with vodka on the flight over..."_  
'Mireille as a drug-addict' is an Explixi Original Joke, copywrite 2004.

It's probably just me, but I hear the Nazgul music every time Excel shows up.

The penguin jokes continue in Excel's monologue. I suspect CLAMP has something to do with this. And I'm not sure if I've done Excel right; probably not nuts enough.

_"...and I missed and hit the curry udon..."_  
Curry udon is an _Azumanga Daioh_-ism.  
  
_"...Pinot Grand Fenwick..." _  
If you ever find a copy of _The Mouse That Roared_, read it.  
  
_She shook her head. "No, I mean, that voice. It sounded like yours."_  
Didya know that not only did Kotono Mitsuishi do the voice of Excel, and Aya Hisakawa the voice of Skuld, but that Yumi Touma voiced both Urd and Silvana The Inviolate Haircutter? It's enough to drive one mad!

Didya know that I had to repost this chapter for the millionth time when I realized I'd misspelled "Hisakawa"?

Didya know that I had to repost this chapter a million times because the blasted text editor filters out all asterisks and pointy-brackets?

Didya know that I'm apparently the only person in the universe that has the above problem, and that that fact probably contributed much to this story's inherent madness?

_"Let's just say," said Mireille, with a wry smile, "that that woman's little trick was enough to fund my Masters in Literary Appreciation, okay?"_  
Apparently Miss Readman had a strong influence over a certain young Corsican, as evident in the degree she pursued. Hey, how _else_ can you explain her quoting ways, eh? She's obviously an English major. Erego, all English majors are assassins. It's true! It's why Arts degrees are so popular!  
  
_"...the paramilitary group FREEMEN-1..."_  
Hmmm, FREEMEN-1...hey! Didya know that Keiichi of _Oh My Goddess!_ often abbreviates his name as "K-1" because 1 = ichi?

The audio for the scene where our heroines enter Rumschmit 'n Pat's Tobacco and Hot Wax Emporium is an exact recreation of the start of Monty Python's "The Cheese Shop" sketch, complete with bazouki player. Come to think of it, this place is _also_ uncontaminated by cheese. Huh.

The shop itself could have come from anywhere, but where it did was from _Men in Black_ (not the sequel; that one sucked).

_"Booooooom," said the one called May._  
I can easily envision May going "Booooooom," but the specific reference is to the semi-hidden NPC Algernon in _Fallout 2_, who provided you with free weapon upgrades.

_"The SOCOM's pretty popular nowadays, but you look more of a Walther kind of woman."_  
The SOCOM probably is pretty popular, what with _Metal Gear_ and all. That thing Solidus uses on the Metal Gear Rays is an FN P90, by the way.

Not a huge fan of how the myth turned out, but, meh. Rattori Banzo is probably Hattori Hanzo's cousin or something. And "God of Small Mice" is a pretty good name for the evil blade, all things considered. June 9, 1817 actually was the last heliocentric alignment. It's a bit early for _The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_, so I'm guessing this was a forerunner to the group. As for Rudyard Kipling? Don't ask.

_Half were gold, and glowed with menacing red aura, as if already drenched in the blood of innocents. The others were silver, and radiated a frigid, electric light that hinted at divine retribution._  
It was only after I'd finished this scene that I realized I'd paired up the two super-shells with my two stars in terms of colour scheme. And it does seem fitting that Mireille would get the demonic one.  
  
_"Well, it's a bit tough to tell, actually. Seeing as you've offered me a carrot cake and all."_  
Carrot cake? Actually, I was well-fed and rested when I wrote this bit, so your guess is as good as mine.  
  
_"We were out of forks," she explained._  
The spoon is a reference to The Blue Rajah from _Mystery Men_. "A spoon? Who throws a spoon!?"

_She unlatched her arms from the severely-bent larch she'd hooked onto, slumped to the ground, and then opened her eyes._  
"Number 37: the larch." (Python, Monty)  
  
_In a sort of bizarre reversal of the Tunguska explosion, all the vegetation surrounding the clearing was now almost level with the ground, pointing towards its centre._  
The Tunguska explosion was a weird incident back in Russia during the early 1900s where people heard this loud bang out in the middle of nowhere. When they investigated, they found that an entire forest had been flattened, almost as if some sort of nuclear weapon had gone off. See the Internet for more; I think the current theory involves some sort of anti-matter meteorite.

Right about the time I wrote this, actually, Stephen Hawking announced he had lost a bet with another scientist on the subject of black holes.

_"You never know until you try," replied Mireille, smiling. _  
"You never know until you try," said Jack Burton.

Chapter 6

Habe Quiddam = Get Something  
Ham Quiddam = Ham (Ham) Something

In the reviews for this story, someone asked that I "get some Chloe stuff going on." Uh, this is it. Sorry.

_"Many are now their willing slaves, tending to their every need; some even transport them around town on their shoulders and feed them by hand."_  
The _Hamtaro_ cast is obviously a well-organized, fanatical terrorist organization. Think about it: they employ people from all nations and backgrounds, have access to vast amounts of financial resources (where do all those sunflower seeds come from?), and have infiltrated the social-political lives of everyone of significance in town, blackmailing them for affection. They're a small, highly mobile group that nonetheless takes down persons and organizations much larger than themselves ("Little Hamsters, Big Adventures"). They cheat, steal, deceive, manipulate, and terrorize everyone around them for their own nefarious ends, and perform acts of industrial, technological, and agricultural sabotage almost every episode. Oxnard himself is obviously a heroin addict, his syringe graphically replaced by a sunflower seed. Add a complex network of underground tunnels and fortified bunkers and, well, the evidence speaks for itself.  
  
_"Known only by his serial number, SN-ZR, he managed to infiltrate the upper echelons of the cult's theocracy as a sleeper agent."_  
Of course Snoozer's a sleeper cell. Think about it: he arrives without any explanation, moves about undetected, and yet has so effectively gained the trust of this Ham Quaeda cell that they plan out all their operations while he's in earshot. He's obviously got a satellite phone hidden in that sock of his.  
  
_"Project Zwei Hahm."_  
Zwei = "two," hence, "Ham-Ham."

Le Patron = The Boss.

_"Can't hit him," she replied, still shooting. "Too fast."_  
I find this line hilarious for some reason.  
  
_It was some sort of tiny, severely burnt, yellow cloak._  
HA! Fragged them all, even that stupid Pikachu-squeaking thing! HA HA HA! ...Hamtaro? Bazooka? 3 AM.  
  
_"We discussed this already; these guys are fast and vicious in close, right? So we hang back 100 meters and use an accurate automatic with a high ROF."_  
The HK G11 is probably a remarkably stupid weapon for Kirika to have in this scene, despite its accuracy and insane burst-fire rate. I realized afterwards I should've given her a shotgun. Hamtaro! Both barrels! Ch-chick! BOOM!  
  
_"And why the hell are you dressed like a clown!?"_  
Don't ask me, it's not my dream sequence.  
  
_A purple haired girl in exceptionally dirty clothes stumbled up to the table, clearly intoxicated._  
Chloe as a wino is an Ekplixi Original Joke, copywrite 2004.  
  
"_How 'm I supposed t' meet curfew when I gotta freakin' WALK back home? From Switzerland?! Huh!?"_  
Y'know, ya gotta wonder if Chloe and Kirika really do walk everywhere, or if they don't just hop into a private helicopter whenever the camera cuts away. Or maybe they take a shortcut through the Astral Plane or something.  
  
_"We'll swallow your souls!" they howled. "We'll swallow your souls!"_  
Ash of _Army of Darkness_ would recognize this line.

Chapter 7

Where are Monsters in Dreams = straight from Marathon, and one of its most trippy levels.

This, theoretically, is where the "horror" part of this story's classification comes in, if, by "horror," you mean, "horribly bad horror."

I'm not content with the lead-up to the shooting. I cut it short on purpose, since I'm not comfortable with so blatantly rehashing a moment from the show. Especially since I _despised_ all those flippin' flashbacks. Stock footage! Fast-forward!

_"We live, breathe, and die at His command, at the will of the great Author of our lives."_  
I used "Author" since I figured more cynical readers would think I was pulling a stupid self-insertion on them. Nope, I leave that for the commentary track.  
  
_The chain snapped; pearls sang through the air, as did the watch itself, hurled by her hand._  
Ever notice how the Watch of Doom is pictured as being hooked on a string of peals in about 2000 different pieces of artwork, but nowhere in the actual series? (End-credits don't count, dork.)  
  
_The world shattered._  
The "world-shattering" effect is an old one, but I got it from a well-written episode of _Star Trek: the Next Generation_ entitled...crud, can't remember. You know the one. Yeah, that one. With that doctor. Who tries to drive Riker insane.  
  
_Someone laughed in her ear. A great, leathery hand with claws of steel closed over her vision, and pressed down._  
Who better to manipulate dreams than Freddy Krueger himself? (Snicker!)  
  
_"It's just a penguin."_  
The penguin...uh...yeah. The fight scene itself was inspired by the Cave Troll sequence, obviously, although he goes out like The Witch King. As for the penguin, that was random brainstorming. "Okay, she's afraid of penguins, right? So, what's scarier than a penguin? A giant one? A giant, zombie, demon, cyborg one? With a chainsaw? Booyah!" It kinda snowballed from there.  
  
_"Never...wearing...heels...again!" she gasped._  
Anyone who thinks Mireille's an idiot for wearing poor balance, highly-breakable high-heel designer shoes instead of some sensible silent runners, raise your hand? Anyone who wants to call me out on the fact that chibi-Mireille doesn't wear high-heels, shaddap! It's a dream; obviously, part of her adult self has managed to emerge in this scene.  
  
_The goop did, in fact, taste a bit like marshmallow._  
I liked _Ghostbusters_. That is all.  
  
_"Sorry, haven't the foggiest, signed Rational Thought," she read._  
Rational Thought became a full-fledged character in this chapter.  
  
_The figure was still bathed in light, but she could just make out a feminine silhouette. A dress. Wings. Hair that sprung forth like a flower. And a radiant smile. The radiant one was either very, very far away, or very, very small._  
"Hair that sprung forth like a flower." Says, "My!" a lot. Now, who could this be?  
  
_"You two share a bond, a special bond, one of life, love, and death."_  
Wow, character-developing dialogue in a train-wreck crossover parody-spoof. Surprised the hells outta me, that's for sure.  
  
Chapter 8Thing What Kicks... = according to The Marathon Story website, a reference to an enemy called the Juggernaut, which, in Nebulonese, is called "The Big Floaty Thing What Kicks Our Asses." I LOVE this game!  
She What Kicks... = who's doing the kicking here?  
  
_"But..." said the original, as she and the others advanced on the bewildered Corsican, "the problem with being me is..." She smiled, wickedly. "...There's so many of me."_  
I figured that since every piece of modern fiction is now contractually obliged to spoof the Burly Brawl, I might as well. Funny thing was, I also had room for character development.  
  
_"I am her cold sweat," said another._  
This sequence (except the bit noted below) is from _Fight Club_, obviously.  
  
_"I'm the old man." "I'm the old lady." "I'm soup."_  
Best dialogue from _You're Under Arrest_, courtesy The Junior Thespian Society. The best part, of course, is that, if you look really carefully in the last OAV, you can actually see the kid who's playing the role of Soup.  
  
_It bounced, rolled, and snarled like a wounded wolverine, spraying mayonnaise everywhere, then charged with a speed that gave the words "fast food" a whole new dimension of terror._  
I've got a mad club sandwich; of _course_ it will fight like Gollum. Or maybe Wolverine. Y'know, I think this is, like the sixth food-related gag in this story so far?

Chapter 9

Ex Cathedra = "from the cathedral," a proclamation that is accepted without question.  
Ex Muris = "from the mouse."  
  
_The spectral fog rolled in, bearing whispers. And there were arms, hands, and faces there, by the hundreds, all dead, all rotting...and all too familiar._  
Huh, the Path of the Dead. Meh. Since when did I say this story was original? Hells, it's _fan_fiction, after all; I'd probably be shot if I _didn't_ rip off everything in all creation.  
  
_"I am here."_  
The Phantom of the Opera musical did exactly this with surround sound, to great effect.  
  
_"Fear is the mind-killer," she gasped, "the little death..."_  
Y'know, I never could get into _Dune_, but this famous little mantra seemed appropriate.  
  
_Mireille nodded, looking over his shoulder. Keep this guy busy..._  
I realized later that this tactic made metaphysical sense, too; if this was the dreamworld, and will is all, and Mireille keeps the Master's will focused on her...  
  
_"I am the Master of Dreams! I. AM. **IWATA MITSUO!**""_  
The sad thing is, given what happens to the poor guy in _Mini-Goddesses_, Gan-Chan as Freddy Krueger is a distinct possibility.  
  
_When the time comes, whose life will flash before yours?_  
Actually from the _Marathon_ level "Hang Brain," spoken/typed by the dying AI Durandal who is in the process of merging with the player character. Essentially, he is wondering whose life will flash before the player's eyes at the moment of death; his/her own, or Durandal's? Considering how close Mireille and Kirika have become at this point, she just might be thinking the same thing.

Chapter 10

Electric Sheep = title of a series of dream levels in _Marathon_. Each is actually a hallucinatory version of the very last level; all the enemies behave strangely, and the text terminals are filled with bizarre statements and stories, seemingly from the player character's own thoughts. The player enters this level (ideally) three times throughout the game, in an amazingly complex dimension-hopping quest to prevent a horrible thing from happening. (Sound familiar, yet?) Moreover, if you finish the Electric Sheep levels the "wrong" way, you end up zipping back to an earlier level in the game, making your _Marathon: Infinity_ session a potentially endless one.

Several pixilated cherubim descended from above and sprinkled dust on the corpse, tinkling like bells.  
Ever heard of this spell called "Life 3"? It's in this sort of role-playing game popular in Lithuania. "Penultimate Mythology," or something.  
  
_And all throughout the Dreamscape, dancing through the wreckage of shattered minds and broken dreams...  
GAN-CHAN WAS LAUGHING_  
Taken from the end of the first Marathon.

The Final Status screen draws upon multiple games. The first few categories (and the Ranking) are from _Metal Gear: Solid_. The character specific categories are from _Perfect Dark_. "Multi-Kill" is _Unreal Tournament_ (earned for fragging 15 hamsters at once), Most Deadly is _Perfect Dark_ (she had the highest kill-count), as is Most Professional (Kirika was tough to hit, went for headshots, like a pro) and the AC -10 Award (she was tough to hit, as if she had an Armour Class of -10). We have a "Tasteful Dress Mode" since a Nude Code wouldn't do anything for Mireille. X4 Firing Rate is a _Medal of Honour_ invention.

Oh, and here's the breakdown on the statistics:

Mireille: 3 Walther P99 shots (2 misses, one hit, one kill (pigeon)), 1 crossbow (book, scenery object, so a miss), 7 rounds to Yomiko (blocked), 1 tranquilizer dart, 1 shot to Excel (kill), 1 super-bullet to Excel (kill), 7 rounds to the CwotU (kill), 1 bazooka round to Hamtaro (15 kills for the entire cast), 17 shots to the penguin (kill), 5 shots (estimate) at the sandwich (misses), 3 (estimate) to the Shadow Host (misses), 1 to Gan-Chan (miss), 1 to Kirika (kill).

Kirika: 1 super-bullet to Excel (kill), 9 3-round bursts from the G11 (misses; this is where her accuracy plummeted), 2 Beretta rounds to Altena and Chloe (kill and kill again), 1 melee attack to the sandwich (kill, but not a shot, so not counted), 1 round to Gan-Chan (miss), 1 stomp to Gan-Chan (kill, not counted in shots fired), 1 round to Mireille (kill).

Thanks for taking this little trip with me, although I can see from the other stories on this site that I've much to learn of madness yet.

Editing completed on August 26, 2004.

Boo Freakin' Yakka,

Kevin "Section 8" Ma


End file.
